Happenstance
by PallaPlease
Summary: The Benbow Inn, with a growing clientele, is obviously in need of another helping hand.  Sarah Hawkins, however, did not expect John Silver.  [First half of part two up.  Yay?]
1. Teaser

Happenstance:  
  
Teaser  
  
---  
  
She laughed before she had time enough to fully understand why it was she did, a surprised sound of humor caught off guard with its defenses down, and Sarah covered her mouth with the back of her hand, flour downy and white on the shallow creases of her palm. Her shoulders shook anyway, giving her away though she tried to pretend she had control yet, and she lowered her hand after she had calmed her lips, stilling them in case she were to laugh again, returning her fingers to kneading the dusty dough with expertise.  
  
"Ah, naow," she heard the cook's deep brogue, a perpetually amused rumble of letters and sounds, "there ain't bein' no harm in laughing, Miss Hawkins, if ye be forgivin' me forwardness." A blade shifted out with a subtle zing from his mechanical arm, slicing quickly and without a note of effort through the jujurin shrimp laid out before him, dark blue creatures in a soft gelatinous shell. The curling, plated tails were skinned off, then swept to the side, and she scooped them absently into her apron, hiding her hand under the cloth to grip the undesirable bits. Silver paused, the blade flicking back into the waiting arm to be replaced by a small drill that he wielded over the immeasurably hard fruit he would need to bore into for the malleable flesh inside, and considered the implications. Had he been at the Benbow Inn long enough already that he and the pup's mother could work as well together as it seemed? Part of it he attributed to the apparent fact that Jim had never told her about the crafty pirate, and he thanked the lad in his mind, as he had nearly every day over the years.  
  
"They always seem to stain my best aprons," she sighed, returning to her dough and digging her fingers deep into the sallow depths, working the softer innards up to meet the warm air of the kitchen. "Twenty years working my own inn and I still haven't caught the hang of it yet." She smiled, worn lines around her mouth and eyes made less so by the firelight crackling from the large stove squarely centered in the expansive kitchen. "You know exactly what you're doing, though," she noted, cupping the dough, satisfied with its texture, and molding it swiftly into a smooth loaf to be baked.  
  
"Aye, when ye spend as many years traipsin' about them stars as I," he replied with a cocky twist of his lips as the smaller figure carefully lifted the sticky loaf, "ye haf ta learn yerself a few t'ings t'keep yer gut filled an' yer hands busy." He patted his gut with his human hand, earning another subdued laugh from the woman, and, mechanical arm switching away from the hard fruits with their holes bored, emptied the frothy liquid into the bowl she absently elbowed across the wooden counter to him. "An' after all, who c'n make tings th' way y'want 'em if ye can't e'en make 'em yerself?" he said philosophically, cyborg eye twinkling.  
  
"Precisely," she agreed and he thought perhaps the lines around her eyes seemed to be just a little lighter than before.  
  
---  
  
Notes: I've been working on 'Happenstance' for about two to three weeks now, and though I'm nearly done with the first part (*crosses fingers*), it's stretching a bit longer than I expected. In any case, if I don't manage to finish it as soon as I hope to, here's the teaser! Flames? Comments? Verbal abuse? Thanks. :]  
  
Originally posted May 11, 2003 at royalnavyacademy.blogspot.com.  
  
Disclaimer: Sarah Hawkins, Jim Hawkins, and John Silver belong to various people, ranging from Disney to Robert Louis Stevenson (whom I prostrate myself before and beg forgiveness of). I'm merely writing 'Happenstance' to make myself feel content inside. 


	2. Part One

Happenstance:                                                                                                                                               Part One 

--

        The night sky was an engulfing pool of darkest black, speckled through by a sprawling patch of drifting white sands, and the brilliant ivory glow of Crescentia painted the desert landscape below into an alien wakefulness.  Small animals, with molting fur as the raining season drew each closer along every edged breath, scurried forth from their tunnels to rest on lean haunches, studying, noses twitching nervously, the parched soil.  They scattered tentatively, off to hunt for the small seeds and herbs they gained all sustenance from, and high aloft in crevices gouged deep into the sides of cliffs, nocturnal preying birds ruffled sleepy fathers and scrabbled into the sky's pool of black to hunt the smaller creatures.  Occasionally one of the birds would swoop too close to the elegantly lopsided building atop a towering plateau, rending loose a warning shriek as tail feathers shifted and the startled bird of prey soared away in swift motions, fleeing the eerie twinkling of the countless gleaming windows.  

        When she could, Sarah enjoyed watching the glorious birds wreathed in slanting cascades of moonlight as they dove and swirled in the heated Montressor air, pausing with trays in tow as she saw sandy tones calling into the night with unfettered abandon.  It was a reminder, at times, of her son, an adventurous soul always seeking some new challenge he could triumph over and bugle in excitement about when he inevitably returned home, outfitted in his regal, beautiful captain's blues with ocean eyes lit by that fire stoking him eternally.  Those were times of celebration, when the regulars and jaded spacers alike gave pause to listen to tales he often leniently embellished or changed, for the children's sake he declared, insisting stubbornly that he had never liked boring stories.

        Tonight, though, was a night without Jim, one filled with all the busy work she had been used to for the drawing close to twenty-one years spent running the Benbow Inn, and she had no time to pause and gaze with wistful eyes at birds untouchable.  "Katya, do you know if Mister King's food is ready yet?" she called to the plump server passing by her, deftly plucking a few bared plates from the abandoned table she was tending.  The woman, frizzy black hair tumbling just so from her loosening cap, shook her head, grimacing apologetically, and she hurried away, delivering a steaming tray of peeling grubs to a delighted creature of anteater-like origin.  

        With a sigh, Sarah pulled away from the table, balancing the stacked plates in her arms to keep them from clattering with painful chimes to the floor underfoot, and picked a quick way to the large kitchen in the back of the unused bar.  Swaying around the polished, slightly dusty counter, she turned to the side, using the flat of her arm and shoulder to knock the swinging door open and enter the fire-lit rectangular room.  "You might need to scrub these with more soap," she confided to one of the mildly overworked dishwashers, offering up a reassuring smile to the hardy, if tired, teenager.  "Emeshul," she started, weaving through the mess of cooks and servers working tenure of part-time jobs milling with grand purpose amongst the counters and large fireplace kilns.

        "Miss Hawkins?" the petite frog-type alien asked, a soft lisp rolling through the words.  Dumpy, short, and quick to obey, Emeshul had been a familiar presence for the scent four months of his working in the Benbow's kitchen, and though he was little more than a notable acquaintance, she was fond of him.  Granted, she was fond of anyone who could ease the tremendous workload that had always plagued the inn.  "Is something the matter, Miss Hawkins?  I do believe I made careful to give Yukio the order for table nine," he continued, clean webbed hands sprinkling flecked basil over a carefully arranged plate of varying meats.

        "She does do best with the larger dishes," Sarah agreed, dipping her hands into the near scalding water held in a deep basin near the corner, "but I need to know if Mister King's order is ready yet?"  She tilted her voice into a hopeful suggestion, shaking her hands to free her fingers of crystal droplets, and she turned to face him, raising her tone into a verging shout as the din in the kitchen exploded a notch: "He says he's been waiting for an hour, and if we don't get it to him, we might as well just let him leave now and free the table up."  Her smile was worn, but kind, and she tugged a clean apron from the rows of pegs along the back close to both the basin and the stretch of counter that Emeshul's when time came for his shift, wrapping the apron expertly around her front and nimbly tying a knot at the small of her back.

        "I have nothing to say if Mister King ordered or not," Emeshul answered after a moment's careful passing, leaning over his nearly finished dish to study the organized chaos of notes.  The slips of paper held the confusing shorthand universally used by the harried servers, and each of the cooks along the counter held such an array of scripted orders, to be used for an obvious completion of each order.  "Would you want me to get one of the servers to ask him for a new orders?"  He snagged a passing girl's sharp elbow, motioning for the dainty ocelot Feline to lift the now completed meat platter and keeping her for the course of time until the woman finishing the impromptu trio spoke.

        "No, don't bother," she sighed, smiling in a lopsided fashion, "we have less than an hour 'til closing in any case.  Let me take that."  Sarah gingerly took the startled young ocelot's burden, holding it in arms made strong by years of lifting and carrying painfully laden trays, and she hurried over the floor, the softer cloth of her dress kept in swirls around her ankles as she moved from the kitchen.  Leaving the stifling kitchen heat for the more comfortable warmth of the dining area, she pulled herself to the side as a smile child wobbled past, gurgling happily while clapping sweetly pudgy hands, and she felt a quiet smile brushing her lips at the memory of her own boy toddling aimlessly about.  She shook her head, then, grounding her own mind in the bustling present, and she put a brisk greeting smile on her lips as she quickly read the table number the plate was to be delivered to – _thirteen,_ it read in sloppy jargon – and oriented herself toward the side booth was an exhausted creature of undetermined blood.  

        "A platter of meat cuts," she recited, carefully edging the hefty tray from her hands to the glistening table.  "Enjoy, sir."  She smiled, craning her head in polite farewell as she swept away, leaving him to devour his meal in relative solitude and aiming to the rail-thin figure that was the many times mentioned Mister King, waiting impatiently for dining assistance and perhaps someone he could exact his intimidating irritation upon. 

        She echoed the unpleasant sentiment inside, where the easily fitted mask of a helpful entrepreneur did not need flow over, and having grown used to his frequent grouching and, in a case such as this, founded scowling, she wearily said, "I'm very sorry, Mister King, but it seems we've lost your order."  He made a curt, growling noise deep in his shallow, wobbling throat and she forged onward, "We won't be open much longer, so we'll reimburse you at a later date, sir."  

        It had taken more effort than usual to treat him politely, mustering forth what dwindling store of patience remained after a trying day with nary a break in customers, as several ships had apparently docked at Crescentia.  They had, of course, unloaded hungry spacers via the small ferries that shuttled from Montressor to the ivory port glistening above.  She was exhausted and could all but feel her feet throbbing in the supported slippers she donned out of habit and secretive vanity, and to be frustrated even further by this her most complaining regular was perhaps one of the things she had the least possible need for.

        "Preposterous!" he finally exploded, following a minute wherein it seemed he had attempted to puff his thin body up with his outrage.  "I have waited nearly two hours in this spot, at this very table at which I always sit," his voice became affixed in expressing his deeply set offense and reminding her of his patronage, "and I will not leave until I have my order in hand!"  His small, slitted ebony eyes met her tired, but somehow sympathetic if short, gaze, and he exhaled forcibly, fidgeting with the silver-plated fork set on the carefully stitched napkin folded beside the spot his plate was meant to be placed.  "I do apologize for being rude, Miss Hawkins," he said hesitantly, stiffly, continuing with, "but I do want to eat before I die.  Koribune weed soup and a leg of romarn chicken."

        Sarah smiled thinly, transparently frazzled and looking as though a few weeks of straight sleep could do her a nigh galaxy of good, and replied, worn, "I'll do what I can, Mister King, but please try to understand."  She thought, briefly, on adding something, anything, to the open end of her response, but allowed tact and maturity to take her back under their twin arching wings, and smiled, turning and fingering her eyes in a soothing fashion.  A slightly desperate frown came as she returned to the kitchen, having decided t'would be she who prepared the food while servers and lesser cooks drifted into the night and to cozy homes awaiting them, and she paused at the door.  

        A small mirror had been nailed into place on the side of the doorframe, glinting reflective shades, and in its superficial depths she could see herself, a handsome woman with dark hair and strong eyes, but there were wrinkles beginning to web from her eyes in the sleepless bags beneath them.  As faint as the wrinkles in her otherwise healthy and unblemished skin, a faint spray of pepper grey tousled her brown hair, just a few strands peeking from the ruffled hem of her bunched cap.  She was, she realized with a sinking tug in her heart, just a year short of forty and though it was to be expected, she had somehow not been prepared for the inevitability of aging.

        The door swung open, nearly swatting her in the face, and gave her decent reason to step back, surprised and pulled back into the clumsy intricacies of life's unending mechanics, and she offered a gentle smile to the horrified worker apparently preparing to leave the inn.  The spry teenager apologized repeatedly, frantic and anxious as he gave her a look that explained it had truly been an accident, which she had not doubted, and she shook her head in firm denial of his near breathless pleas for forgiveness.  "You didn't mean to," she defined kindly, earning a relieved gasp, "and no harm was done, anyway.  Be a little more careful in the future, okay?"  

        The boy nodded and, smiling broadly, moved slowly to the exit, keeping himself from hurrying out as he obviously wished to in a form of nonverbally wanting to know if it really was all right.  "Just go, shortie," she laughed, teasing and popping her palm lightly against the back of his head, "and hurry if you want to catch the bullyadous tram down there."  He nodded again and jogged around the edges of the room in the direction of the front double doors, vanishing into the gradually dampening air, and she caught the kitchen's swinging door with her hand, holding it open for herself.  "Boys," she sighed affectionately, shaking her head in a mock display of disdain before ducking once again into the waiting kitchen.

        Fewer people remained in the kitchen as the bustling day drew to a close with a deep heave of air, and the smaller amount of workers in the kitchen made it that much easier to sweep across the floor to an abandoned stretch of counter near where Emeshul was frenetically topping off a whipped dessert.  It was, so far as she could tell while plucking a pot from the hanging rack chained to the mildly smoke-blackened ceiling, his last order to complete before he could peel off his stained apron and gather his things like several of her employees were doing, leaving with full guests out to the night.  She smiled, feeling a stressed knot in between her shoulders start to gradually fade, and moved to the sterilizing basin, pushing her sleeves up past her elbows before she was to thrust her hands into the water.  

        "Emeshul, can you reach the jar of koribune and set it out for me?" she called, studying her fingers under the lapping diamond liquid and reluctantly pulling her hands from it.  As she could hear the professional, for the most part, amphibian rustling through one of the countless cupboards, she permitted herself a moment's anxious checking of her palms and wrists for any wrinkles or lines and was happy to find none.  "Thank-you," she smiled quickly, hastily returning to her chosen spot.

        "We have no more than twenty minutes left, Miss Hawkins," he warned, lifting amidst tender care the crystal goblet he had layered the dessert in with both practice and a mechanical perfection short of artistry and finesse.  "I don't think you'll have enough time to really make anything of value."  He moved gingerly to the solitary door, gripping the creamy goblet sternly and ducking from a stout woman rushing to the back where the workers' personal items were protectively stored.

        "I think I can handle it," Sarah said in a murmur to herself as well as no one, reaching for a heavy pitcher whose contents she could pour into the dark pot before her.  She did so, watching clinically the nearly hypnotic way in which it swirled and burbled into the pot, and tipped the pitcher back away from the pot's sturdy metal edge, placing the crafted porcelain gently in the spot she had taken it from.  A few idyllic, but busy, minutes passed as she dipped the glimmering fire-red foliage in the collected water to soften the steely fibers knitting the weeds into the wiry strength that made them difficult to cook and prepare for nigh anything.  Her hands occupied with the task of jerking and tearing the weeds into a manageable collection of shreds to be dropped as a haze in the water staining red by the natural dye woven through the plants as coloring, she breathed out and closed her eyes to the quiet ripping sounds.  

        It seemed strange that she felt peculiarly lonely, what with the work force of various peoples that was rapidly dwindling as they retreated to the broader world outside, and she felt marginally worried at the recognition that it had been years since she had felt truly content.  Jim was gone, doing his sovereign duty as a naval captain and sating that itch bled into his soul that sought for things new and wondrous.  Doppler, too, was no longer seen with the frequency of years past, finding his paws full with dealings as a first mate of sorts and the worrying father of at least four distinct children.  The thought brought a smile to her face, imagining the wearying antics they undoubtedly tormented their poor father with, and thereby amused their almost tyrannical mother, but it also served to remind her of her own loneliness.

        With a muted sigh, she bit her lower lip lightly, pulling forcefully to rip the last painfully strong ribbon of koribune in two, and cast the halves to float in twirling wafts to the tranquil surface below, sparking ripples and sinking just so into the reddened water.  _This is absurd,_ she thought with a sad smile as she tried to cheer herself up and failed quietly, wanting to remind her own mind of the people still left to her, those who had always frequented the Benbow and it seemed always would.  Were they not her friends?  _Of course, _she conceded, nodding her head and sprinkling a delicate rain of spice into the waiting soup, pulling a large bowl of assorted vegetables to her side and sorting out the ones she would use.  _I'll always have them, _and she did her best to ignore the insistent pangs inside that belied her internal reassuring litany, plopping a string of sliced vegetables down to splash and capsize alongside the mesh of mingling koribune.

        Tipping in a collection of meat cuts that she pried from a large icebox in the back finished the cold preparation of the soup and she grasped the gritty handles firmly against her palms, lifting it off the counter and maneuvering it to a boiler sandwiched 'tween two kilns.  Sarah slid it with some effort onto the waiting grid, blowing a soft breath out with a soft murmur in it.  A sharp twist of the dial that would bring up the solar heat brought the makings of the soup as close to being done as she could do for the moment.  She brushed her hands down her apron, a look of lost hesitation creasing her features in a pretty expression echoing the weary emotions tearing around within her chest.  How was it she could be surrounded by people who cared for and respected her, and yet feel as though she had been abandoned, empty and tired?

        She held a hand to her mouth, lips thinning under the touch of her fingertips, and was frozen, gazing miserably at the wall as the last of the workers carefully untied her apron and flung it on top of the hamper of articles to be cleaned.  "Have a good evening," she whispered, tucking her hand up her face, filtering the smooth tips of her fingers through her limp bangs.  A laugh came then, at odds with her sudden emptiness, and she recovered the confidence that had preserved her for nearly fifteen years, shaking her hand from her face.

        Pity of any sort would do naught for her and she rolled her shoulders, determined to use the last nine minutes left to their fullest, bringing the obnoxious Mister King his meal and checking on the unusually scant number of individuals renting rooms in the inn as soon as the dining hall was to be closed.  As she moved to one of the iceboxes, in search of the large, dumpy sort of mindless fowl known as the romarn chicken, she wondered, briefly, on how it was she could be so composed for the sake of others and be vulnerable when she was on her own.  

        She thoughtfully tapped the soft rubber pad at the corner of the counter's farthest outreach and a thousand sounds of clicking, whirring, spiraling came as automated robots burst from their hiding spots, blinking foggy eyes and moving to the preprogrammed chores and destinations assigned each.  It was a funny glimpse into reality, seeing the small plated creations powering across the floor and through the grudging door, spilling out to the glowing dining area in single purpose to clean or scoop or wash all they could before they would retire to their obscured cubbies in the kitchen.

        Once she had flecked off the slimed, filmy skin on the admittedly large bird leg, she glanced up to see Emeshul entering hesitantly though the door, wiping his small webbed hands in the spattered shades of white of his apron.  "I'm nearly done," she called to him across the glimmering, heated expanse of the kitchen.  Her nimble, practiced fingers rolled out a layer of bread crumbs and, pinching the two ends of the leg easily with her uneven fingernails, she forced the chilled wet meat onto the gravel bread, twisting it over to create a layering on the swell of the leg.  "If you don't mind, would you please out the koribune," she inclined her chin toward the open jar, rolling her shoulder up to wipe across her cheek in absent dismissal of a small stain, "back in the cabinet?  I just need to finish this and I can start closing up."  Shaking the heavy bit of romarn chicken, sending a few reluctantly clinging crumbs to wobble on the wooden counter, she glanced down the length of the bar as her amphibious companion padded over the foot-worn floorboards and she claimed a moderately sized terracotta dish.

        Fitting the leg into the dish and settling it firmly betwixt the stern walls of the hard ruddy clay, Sarah moved to place it in a kiln, the fires in most having been extinguished by the workers now gone, and she flinched her hand back the moment before her cream-colored fingers could brush the fiery grill in it.  A small log was filched out of the wire holdings kept under the kiln, in a thin space used to store firewood, and she carefully propped the log to accent and heighten the hypnotically flickering fire heating the kiln and the food she had placed in on the grill.  There was an odd feel in the air as she gazed at the flames for a few entranced seconds, an uncomfortable atmosphere not caused by the piercing, stifling heat touching her front, and she turned, a half shuffle around in her slippers, heels scraping over the floorboards.  "Emeshul?" she asked slowly, seeing a knot in his posture that put her ill at ease.

        "Miss Hawkins," he eventually began in a voice fraught with a nervous hesitation, holding lightly the now closed jar of koribune, "I wish to inform you…that is to say, I am," he trailed off.  An expression of helpless concentration flitted over his squashed features as she checked the pot and found it burbling gaily, ready to be moved from the boiler in a hurried fashion whilst she waged futile battle with time's clawing restraints.  "Well," Emeshul began anew, shoving the jar into a desolate cabinet and swinging shut the polished wooden door, "this is somewhat difficult to say, and I really don't find myself happy with it."  He paused as second time, all but wringing his hands together, the fine sheen of wetness ever present on his smooth skin just a bit brighter, and she waited patiently as she moved the pot from the boiler to rest on a swath of used towels on the counter.

        Finally, eh straightened his normally bowed back in a stubborn manner, as though perhaps a steel rod had been threaded along and merged with his gelatinous spine, and Emeshul intoned in a voice that quaked but a little, "I will be taking leave of the Benbow Inn come the end of the 'morrow."  When she stilled, drawing her hands from the pot absently, perhaps out of conditioned response, he continued despairingly, softly, "I am first and foremost a spacer, Miss Hawkins, and of our – your – guests this eve offered me place as cook.  Said his previous was planning to stay on at Montressor."  He stopped and watched the collected aura that seemed to envelope Sarah, and she smiled sadly at his next words.  "I truly am sorry, Miss Hawkins," he spoke carefully, an upset tone in his voice, "but I can't hardly refuse.  Against my nature, ma'am."

        "Oh, it's fine," she replied almost forcibly, waving a dissuasive hand through the choking warm air she was so accustomed to.  "Really, it's perfectly all right.  I thought it was coming one day, anyway, and I'm sure you'll wow 'em something good, won't you?"  Her voice's texture adopted a friendly note of teasing and his face visibly sagged, obviously relieved and swamped through with a whole elation she had to admit he did not often seem to feel.  "Could you please just make sure the overnighters get to their rooms before you go?"  She smiled thinly, forcing a bright expression onto her tired features, and Emeshul nodded excitedly, nearly bowing with the childish happiness he fairly radiated at the prospect of returning to the etherium so many loved entirely.

        Only after he was gone did she allow her smile to fade into a quiet look that meant an ocean of depth but would take hours to even dream of deciphering, and Sarah whispered in her slippers to the kiln, drawing the warmed terracotta dish out and placing it gently on a black platter.  Stiffly, and very self-contained, she began to smoothly, automatically, ladle out large, dripping spoonfuls of the soup to slosh in a cradling bowl until it came just shy of brimming and spilling over.  It felt, deep in the soles of her feet where she could feel her pulse pounding, locking in the corner of her shoulder blades and at the base of her neck where the bundle of nerves and muscles sighed painfully once again, like every part of her wanted to simply give up.  She could tell she had grown weary over the years, tired of seeing people come to stay for days or weeks or months only to gather their scant belongings together and hitch a ride on the next ship to pull in on the docks or port at the ever-lit Crescentia glittering white in the sky.

        She wanted something different than that, Sarah realized as she hoisted the serving platter into her grip, positioning it out of half present memory along the crooks of her elbows; she wanted something stable, something she could trust and lean on when the occasion allowed, such as the Benbow, but preferably alive.  She smiled, almost laughing at herself, and wove to the door, balancing the platter – wielding it with the greatest degree of care – and slowly inching the thick wooden barrier aside with a push of her hip.  The thought occurred to her that perhaps she felt loss inside not at the constant shifting of lives and people around her, but maybe that she feared being left alone, completely and irreversibly abandoned by people she grew attached to.

        She would welcome people such as just a few more customers who would not behave in as blatantly exasperating a manner as Mister King.  He had left his table in what she could wryly assume was a huff, the silverware piled carelessly to the side, folding cloth napkin thrown into a miniature tent displayed lopsidedly close to the center on the green tablecloth.  His chair had been twisted aside, arrogantly granting her a peek at the seat he had occupied and left some time during the few ten-and-so minutes she had used as best she might in hopes of finishing the meal to his snippy liking.  She had obviously been judged as failing before she could even bring to him the dish he had complained about, and with a tired, amused sigh, she gently pushed the platter onto the table.  She slid it lightly into a position where it graced the core flatness of the table, the napkin's tailored edge pinned beneath the not exceptionally awesome weight.

        Smiling a little at nothing notable at all, she seated herself with a carol of subdued murmurs from her skirts and apron brushing against one another and striking the bendable hoops swirled around her legs to keep her skirts in a ladylike presentation of a drooping flower, and she propped her elbow on her knee.  She took a moment to straighten the fold of her attire out, smoothing her palm down the cotton folds, and she rested the sturdy contour of her chin in the curved dip where her fingers curled lazily in to tap right below the pale pink shell of her lower lip.  Somehow it was telling that, though Mister King still annoyed her and she still pretended quite effectively that he did not, he really never struck her as malicious or mean-spirited in the things he often said or did.

        Her eyes fluttered shut, briefly plummeting her world into an amalgam of smell and sound: the soup sang of simplicity, the faint spicy smell of the koribune blended with a tangy saltiness; countless shifting clicks and buzzes followed the unseen movements of the steadily working robots, clearing the last scraps of food and taking away emptied glasses and plates; and there was the quite feminine fragrance that the mostly female workforce spread by way of vastly spritzed perfume and mere presence in the currently empty dining hall.  This was what she perceived as normal, these scents and sound she recognized day by day, used to and accepting each as part of the regular stream of her persisting life, and she opened her eyes to see the daintily glazed wall opposing her seat.

        She turned to face the twirled chair across the table and leaned over, grasping swiftly the handle of the fork left behind and tugging it out of the small, clumsy pile formed by articles of silverware, and the slender brunette followed by simply flipping the rest of the utensils over to herself.  She twisted the fork in her hand, spiraling it momentarily about, and stabbed the haunch of meat with the rows of glinting prongs, delicately severing enough of the breaded, sweetly moist chicken to sufficiently fill her mouth.  Lips pursing as she scraped it from by the fork by using her teeth, Sarah closed her eyes again and smiled quietly.

-

        The winds had picked up by mid-morning, a loud roar that banged the shutters like tiny echoes of thunder that quivered shingles and shook the smallest lengths of wall with the rising force of each blow.  The two or three guests who had not left at dawn were holed up in their respective rooms, timidly wanting to wait out this taste of coming monsoons.  It would be a mere matter of weeks until the raining season exploded into presence, the clouds piling into ominous mountains of shaded blackness aloft in the sky; the swelling clouds would be twisted into a whipped darkness growling as they prepared to expound an ocean of screaming crystal rain that would flood the arid deserts and form a shallow sea of about a foot at the plateau's base.  Skies would blacken and dust would slowly cascade and melt into a fine silt that would ooze up beneath each step, no matter how light, a wet humidity forming to encircle in a welcome embrace until the crushing sinkholes and whirlpools would be born in the last three months of the storming season.

        She hurried as she half ran, half strolled down the long stairs, certain that she had discerned a breathless, frantic knocking at the barred front door, a nearly obscured sound just a hint different in rhythm and texture from the sorrowful howling that spun together the clattering, weeping wind.  Nearly tipping over, her slippered foot trodding on the doubled hem of her dark blue skirt, Sarah raised a hand to check that her modesty cap was securely drawn tight about her thick brown locks and untucked her skirt from below her foot on the honey glaze of the last step.  

        "Coming," she called loudly, clearly, and she stepped lightly off the final step, striding as quickly as she could in a rustle of skirts to the heavily barred front door.  No windows were granted view into the dining hall, amber drapes kept tied with gold tasseled rope and sunlight shining through the drapes in shafts of glowing light, and so she did not know whom it was she would open the door to see.

        The heavy wooden block set firmly in the locking slots was lifted with relative ease, for Sarah had spent many years waging war with several objects of similar weight, including a notably excitable son of five years, and she grasped the smooth oak handle, tugging strongly.  It swung open with nary a creak, quietly powerful as it moved in a semicircle loop along its unmoving brass hinges, and she took a sliding step backwards, glancing up before she peered around the door, blue eyes snapping wide open.  "Oh my Lord!" she gasped, a horrified note in her voice as a small young woman silently shuffled out of the wind tousling her black hair frenetically about, bouncing her tiny babe absently on her shapely hip.  "Rosa!"

        "I'm very sorry, Miss Sarah," the girl, a Tentaclan barely old enough to constitute as a woman, whispered, slender fingers playing in the swath of her daughter's shaggy, downy hair.  "I mean, I don't want to trouble you," and she broke off, dabbing a fingertip – scarred where her species' trademark miniature suction cups had been sliced off – to the swollen bleeding of her lower lip.  The child, too young to even be a year in age, burbled and wiggled small fingers in the air as though to welcome with a sort of youthful wondering the passage of wind before the door was thrust shut and the crazed breeze fell to naught.

        "Robert and I fought again," Rosa started a second time, taking a subdued seat that the older woman directed her to.  "I can't even remember over what.  I grabbed Mandi," here she gently bounced her ruby-skinned infant, the innocent head turning to gaze wide-eyed at Sarah, who managed to dredge up a kind smile, "and we spent the last few hours hidin' in Benbow isself."  Mandi shifted pointedly in her mother's tender grip, chubby knee brushing a spot along the pretty, bruised Tentaclan's ribs and causing her to wince, thin hand flying up to clutch lightly at the place beneath the silky cloth of a torn yellow slip.  "Could we stay here, please?" she asked, voice falling into a whisper again as her happily, nonsensically babbling daughter waved her arms out to be lifted by the maternal innkeeper.

        "You know you can stay here as long as you need to," Sarah confided in a careful, mothering voice.  She smiled, earning in reply a hesitant twitch of the other woman's busted lips, and continued, with a soft tone, "Do you want to tell me what he did to you, Rosa?"  Her thumb swept away a few humidity crinkled strands of hair from the sharp, narrow face watching her miserably, a soothing gesture she had been comforted with by her own mother and used in turn to quiet Jim when he was but a toddler.

        Mandi, tired of being ignored by the human woman she was reaching sweetly out to, reminded the older women of her continued presence, crying, "Ah, ah!"  She pursed her slitted lips, pupil-less black eyes widening with the full depth of her begging emotion, and blew a quick succession of bubbles that popped as swiftly as they appeared, the thin gills - a remnant from the centuries long ago, before large masses of Montressor land dried into desert and the climate gradually changed from normal fluctuation to dual extreme season  - on her neck flaring as warning to an approaching tantrum.  "Uhn," she whimpered, arms straining forward, "uhn."

        "Oh, you better take her, Miss Sarah," Rosa managed, voice still soft to keep from jarring her wounded lip.  "She won't stop until she gets what she wants."  She turned the tiny, hiccupping child around, settling the small weight off of her hip and onto her knee, and caressed the sharp point of her daughter's ear, bringing a surprised look to the pudgy face and a respite from the coming sobs.  A sad, inexplicable smile touched Rosa's angled features, as though she was not letting her daughter go for only a moment, and she whispered a quiet, foreign word to her child, one that sounded as a drifting wind falling silent after days of enraged blowing.

        Sarah smiled welcome to the paused, but still grasping vainly child and, resting her hand comfortably if firmly under her upraised arms, tugged her softly up from the sleekly skirted knee she had rested temporarily on.  "Hello, cutie," she grinned comically, pressing a quick smack to the round swell that was Mandi's cheek, "you're looking absolutely adorable today."  Mandi laughed, peals of baby giggles rumbling in honey sweet echo, and she waggled her fingers over the smooth skin on Sarah's face, rows of miniscule, barely visible suction cups tickling her chin and nose as fingertips passed across.  "Be careful, Mandi, I'm not sure if I'm ticklish or not."

        Mandi replied with an upturned nose and friendly raspberry, her cherry vibrant shoulders quivering under the rough cotton of her engulfing shirt, and she continued with a cacophony of disconnected noises, a noisy thread woven from a few confiding rolls of her lips and mismatched syllables.  She became, for just a moment, the focus of both gazes, and she was obviously pleased to be such, raising her voice and ducking her nose into the dipping curve of Sarah's lower neck, mumbling incomprehensible babbles into the modest collar there.  "Mah, uhn," she smiled brightly, pulling back with her short dark hair swept accidentally to form a set of rapidly flattening spikes and whorls.

        "What did Robert do?" questioned Sarah, keeping the query cautiously hemmed with a loving tone so as to avoid possibly upsetting the infant.  Her palm rubbed affectionately along Mandi's small, sharp nose, inciting a silly burble to burst free of tiny lips, and she leveled a protective, demanding gaze on Rosa, whose responding look was not so much defiant as despairing, clearly not wanting to discuss it.  "Oh, don't worry about it, Rosa," she said hastily, regretting her dismissal of her own question but knowing better than to push the subject.  "Just…tell me later, okay?  You shouldn't be suffering.

        "Anyway," she forced a bright note, jogging Mandi – who laughed and clapped her hands awkwardly, freely together – up playfully, "I'm going down to the Benbow bazaar in a few minutes.  With the storms coming, I needed to take the bullyadous and the wagon with me to stock up on at least an extra month's worth of supplies before the market's packed up and moved out of the Flatlands."  Sarah smiled down at Mandi.

        "Please bring Mandi with you," Rosa blurted anxiously, eyes flickering with the pale worry painted into her wan expression.  "It's just," she hesitated, leaning forward to tenderly graze her hand in a lingering fashion down her babe's face, "Mandi hasn't been gettin' a lot of healthy air lately, an' it'd do her a world of good."

        Sarah paused, thinking as Mandi slowly glanced, curious, between her mother and the friendly woman she was snuggling close to, and the youthful infant made a questioning sound, rocking up to judge her holder's face better.  "Sure," agreed the brunette, tapping a dulled fingernail to the dainty, flecked tip of Mandi's nose.  "It'll be fun, won't it, Mandi?"

-

        It grew into a game they together developed, she and Mandi, as the child swiveled quickly about in Sarah's arm, pointing at things that snagged her infant fancy, and the woman laughed, bouncing her lovable burden with affectionate teasing.  The bazaar had many things, as well as many people, to bring attention to themselves at the chubby, extended finger of the small Tentaclan, shining wares and piled foodstuffs effectively attracting the usual near-bursting population of shop-goers and the occasional wandering tourist.  By no means were the crowded, though wide, streets of the makeshift market a place to lead a plodding, bored bullyadous hitched to a large wagon, and so he had been left with the sturdy wagon to feast on speckled oats in the pens reserved for the many beasts of burden.  Protective canvas awnings muttered shuffling conversations where the winds, tossing building clouds ever nearer to a storming pitch, slapped the hanging fringes to a cavalcade of movement and inconsistent sound.

        "Da!" Mandi ordered, stabbing her red finger pompously at the glaring noon sun, her eyes and face turning up to better gaze at the heated source of daylight.  "Da?" she repeated, blinking her eyes rapidly as tiny white dots appeared where a human's pupils would be, the white dilating in a manner of mentioned pupils, and she lifted fisted hands to her face.  Rubbing forcefully at her wounded eyelids, her as of yet round face tilting back down toward Sarah's shoulder, she mumbled a piteous noise, wiping her fatty fists strongly over her eyes, and gave a miserable look to her current guardian.  "Da mahm," she stated mournfully as explanation.

        "That's the sun, Mandi," laughed Sarah, jiggling the still whimpering babe nestled 'twixt waist and hip, and she stroked her hair comfortingly.  "See?  The sun is very bright, so we shouldn't look too closely at it."  She bounced Mandi again, receiving a spiteful burble and sloppy kiss to her cheek in return, and she checked, swiftly, to see that the rapidly formed ivory pupils had contracted, vanishing back into the infinite pooling black of her innocent irises.  "We don't want you to go blind, now, do we?  Of course we don't, because," Mandi giggled as she was once more bounced, "what would," another bounce birthed forth a happy laugh, "your mother think of that?"  She gently tickled her fingers on the sensitive red skin between the dark, pearlescent eyes, and the child cooed in a most questioning manner, tiny hands wrapping around the larger wrist to draw the offending fingers down to her mouth.  "You have such pretty eyes, too, and please don't bite me."

        Obliviously, the one cut tooth in Mandi's small, warm mouth clamped over a finger, pinning it nearly painfully under gum and over solitary tooth, and Sarah made a scolding noise deep in her throat, carefully extracting her stinging finger along with its partners from her mouth.  Mandi warbled protest, reaching out with, "Nngh," for the unintentional teething toys.  After a moment weaving through the undulating crowd proved she was not going to regain her mortal prizes, she quickly became disinterested, murmuring nonsense to herself and craning her head about to see the iridescent dryness of summer Montressor.  "Da," she gaped joyfully, her tooth pale in her dark pink maw as she pointed eagerly at a swarthy Canine, babbling with breathless awe to herself.

        "Silly," Sarah teased, spotting a familiar face gabbing easily with a potential customer from behind a small booth table displaying an array of silky cloths and delicately sewn apparel.  "Missus Dunwoody," she called over the distance, firmly prying a curlicue of her dark hair from an insistently probing chubby hand that sulkily retreated.  "I thought you didn't like selling at the bazaar!"  Adjusting her grip around Mandi's small torso, the pair of rounded knees pressing very lightly into her abdomen, she swerved through the continuously shifting crowd to meet the well-known patron of the Benbow, and smiled at the constantly finagling expression that remained on the alien's face.  "Say hello to Missus Dunwoody, Mandi," suggested Sarah gently and Mandi, suckling on her thumb, yodeled around the appendage all but filling her tiny mouth.

        "Have a lovely day, Miss Harper," the many-tentacled alien said in a bright voice, waving two of her many arms in congenial dismissal of the youthful being of undetermined breed.  "Ah, Missus Hawkins, Janet told me the inn was closed today, don't touch that, please," she stiffly plucked a green satin bonnet out of an eagerly leaning Mandi's wriggling grasp, "and Herbert's been complaining that I ought to try selling out here before the rain starts.  This dust is murder on my allergies, though."  She sneezed daintily by way of example, touching a wafting arm to her flat nose in as ladylike a manner as she could.  Primly folding the bonnet she had saved from the dubious threat of ham-handed Mandi, her other invertebrate arms proceeded to marginally rearrange her decisively feminine display.  "Is that a cotton cap you are wearing, Missus Hawkins?" she demanded after a few seconds filled with the rambling sounds of Mandi, no small degree of horror in her shrill voice.

        "Yes," Sarah conceded gingerly, tucking aside the deviant strand Mandi had pulled free just a minute before.  Once an uncomfortably recognizable gleam alighted on Mrs. Dunwoody's face, she made a soft gasp of understanding and swiftly added in meager hopes of cutting off the foreboding sales pitch, "I really prefer my cottons ones over these – _lovely_ bonnets you have set out," the lime green alien was suitably flattered and preened in response, "and I don't think I need any silk caps at all."  

        Mandi, annoyed at being ignored, turned in a peeved fashion and wrinkled her face as though preparing for a good cry, gaining herself a displeased glower from the very proper Mrs. Dunwoody.

        Shrugging off an ensuing puzzled look from the Tentaclan babe, the gaudily lipstick'ed gossipmonger-slash-businesswoman answered Sarah with a disbelieving sniff, "Nonsense!  What woman has no need for a good silk cap?  Forgive me for tooting my own horn, as the youths of today might put it, but I staunchly insist I have the finest women's headwear in all of Benbow, God forgive my arrogance, and you must wear one."  She whipped the green satin bonnet back out from its spot at the bottom of a newly formed stack, twisted the feminine bit of headgear open, and had effectively removed Sarah's meticulously tied cap before she could scoot a word in edgewise.  "Don't touch that," Mrs. Dunwoody snapped severely, upsetting Mandi as one of many tentacles firmly jerked the chosen bonnet about Sarah's head, gracelessly pinning her tumbling brown locks in a state of half-fallen grace.

        With a soft, choking gasp and a rising whine that sounded quite ominously in her small throat, Mandi's midnight eyes slitted prophetically in the scant seconds preceding the unstoppable onslaught of childish tears.  "Mabwa da-uhm," she burbled, chest heaving dramatically as the first fat tear slid in a dooming fashion down her cheek, and from there it was but a simple matter for her to unleash the full tempest of her sorrow.  The foremost shriek was a relative strip of harmony in clinical comparison to the wailing, soul-injured screams that sadly traipsed a lonely echo striking painfully in Sarah's flinching ear, drawing countless gawking stares from the shuffling passerby.

        "Mandi, please," Sarah tried, almost in a faltering tone of begging as the saleswoman forcibly pulled her near, stubbornly adjusting the bonnet with a critical eye.  "Missus Dunwoody," she switched tracks, trying to hold the sobbing, squirming child and simultaneously dissuade her purpose-filled friend, "please, I'm only here to buy supplies."  She would very well have continued to plea had it not been for three of Mrs. Dunwoody's slithering arms slapping on either side of her face, surprising her and jerking her head down sharply so that the Benbow native could swiftly and easily smooth the fabric over her bunched hair.  Remarkably, with the equilibrium and horizon of the world suddenly shifting, Mandi silenced herself into a blissful state of glee, at odds with the ground as she was thrust to a precarious angle threatening to pitch her free of the protective arm wound about her middle.

        Smooth leaf-colored skin darted across a wrinkle in the satin, rubbing it out and sliding to knot the embroidered threads into a lovely bow just below her chin.  "Nearly done," spoke Mrs. Dunwoody as Mandi giggled happily.  "Really, you can certainly afford a few silky things, Missus Hawkins; you have more than enough money.  Why, you're practically wealthy now, aren't you?  Doubtless, and isn't this a perfect charm.  Why do these threads keep tangling?"  Muttering and still holding Sarah's soft, but rectangular face hostage, she tugged her cheek to the left and, quite without meaning to, caused Mandi to finally slip completely out of the guarding arm that had thus far kept her safely balanced.

        Somehow, as the beings closest gaped in shock, Sarah managed to yank free of Mrs. Dunwoody's loosening grasp and catch a crazily giggling Mandi by her arms, hastily hoisting her into a much calmer embrace close to her chest.  When finally she had sufficiently recovered her breath, she delivered an indignant, swelling glare to the horrified and startled gossipmonger, petting the back of her charge's downy head as much to reassure herself as to comfort the child.  "Missus Dunwoody, that is quite enough!" she cried, every maternal thread in her body ablaze with righteous fury, sheltering ire nearly explosive in the glints of her blue eyes.  "I do not want, need, or care about silk caps, especially when my good, old, raggedy cotton ones work better!"

        An offended look crossed the sallow lime face of the woman facing her, as if she had bitten into something extremely sour, and she slapped her arms back, haughtily sniffing the dusty air she had so proclaimed as stressing her allergies.  "Missus Hawkins," she spoke icily, her nasal, vibrating tone made a bit more wobbling in texture by her irrational defense, "I think you're overreacting a little."

        The bonnet slid punctually from her hair, plummeting to land airily in the ever-present dirt underfoot as a drifting mist of swirling pale brown dust was idly blown from the ground by a premature squall wind, and Sarah could find no words apt enough to describe how she felt.  A curious mumble came from the tiny lips of Mandi, lost in that darkly whispering wind, and she lurched up, coming close to clambering over the straight curve of her current watcher's shoulder, an expression of captivated delight contorting her developing features.  Too frustrated to dare speak of the grievous insult Mrs. Dunwoody had taken sternly to heart, she cupped a hand at the base of Mandi's gently dipping spine and switched the child's position with ease, changing it about so they were both watching the stuffily upset alien.  A keening protest came forth out of the cherry mouth of Rosa's daughter as Sarah calmly stooped by the lightly dirtied bonnet, scooping it up into her free hand and shaking it out before silently handing it to Mrs. Dunwoody, who glowered coolly.

        Mandi persisted in her attempts to pluck herself free, first turning one way and then the other, trying to turn about to her earlier stance as she babbled anxiously in the universal gibberish talk of all infants and pointed wildly again.  Sarah sighed, rubbing her palm along the stretch of the child's shoulder blades relaxingly, and deciding she had little to lose if she resumed their game, twisted around to see whatever had excited the eleven-month bundle so.  In the beginning moments, as she tried to ignore the saleswoman snippily whispering at her back, she could see naught other than the expected swell of shoppers in various ethnic and ranking dress.  "Let's go do what we came here for, okay?" she sighed again, taking a single quick step and immediately freezing when Mandi perked up with excellent timing, stabbing her round finger out decisively.

        There was a flicker like that of sunlight catching on smooth metal as she prepared to continue moving, and she paused to lean aside, squinting to see over the distance to the other side of the market street, Mandi smugly rambling.  She was certain she had seen metal and that would not have been odd as several booths marketing jewelry and the ilk were erected in the bazaar's fenced region, but for some reason it had struck her briefly as being out of place.  After a watchful, paused moment, she caught the glint again, this time managing to fix her eyes on it and frowning as several loudly chattering Benbonians passed before her, cutting off what she had been sparked into looking at curiously.

        "Oh for pity's sake," she grumbled, smiling at the broadly grinning babe still happily speaking meaningful nonsense, "I must have gotten God angry, huh, Mandi?  We might as well try crossing."  Bouncing Mandi playfully on her hip, causing her musing babble to warp comically, she began cutting a narrow swath through the crowd, sidling her feet through the dirt cautiously as she ducked and swerved with murmuring apologies around balking walkers.  "Careful!" she warned cheerily as Mandi nearly lunged toward a large creature with thousands of golden orbs dangling from his sparkling head.  "Mandi-in-the-Dirt is a dish I'm not looking to make."  Mandi, in sweetest reply, leaned back toward the woman, offering a smacking kiss to press to the hollow of her cheekbone and wrapping one arm for balance at the back of her neck.

        The glimmer came again, on the edge of her vision, and, feeling a sense of guilty self-consciousness for the unusual breakdown in her maturity, she reoriented her direction of travel to slowly move closer to the source of the unnatural light.  Cuddling Mandi close, she slipped tentatively forward and finally was able to see, through the broad fringe of a kiosk offering an immense selection of fruits and bulbous vegetables; she ignored the barker bellowing for customers to bravely step forward to gaze at his wares, and she felt something like a fuzzy, misted recognition claw at her throat when first she could tell that the dully reflecting metal was part of an expansive cybernetic hand gesturing angrily through the air.  Something sounded in the back of her head, a memory bundled neatly away to keep from cluttering her mind, with but a thread of whispered remembrance left she instinctively knew not to pull.

        Mandi's drifting whispers, little pieces of precious nonsensical lyrics, kept her grounded and stemmed shut the growing sense of unease Sarah could feel wrapping slowly in her gut as she spotted several black-cloaked figures of a wide rang of heights and breeds surrounding the figure claiming the hand.  "Mandi, shh," she ordered absently, rocking her in a quieting rhythm.  

        The hand came from the deep recesses of a gray charcoal coat, sliced off at the shoulder where mechanics took over, the owner's face and body obscured by the shady men gathered about whoever it was, and she realized she had taken a quick step back as the recollection slipped out of her grasp.  She could not explain the knotting discontent that arose when she spied the clicking skeletal cybernetic hand fisting and opening, flashing aside in a curt, powerful movement of dismissal, and attributed it to one of the many easily forgotten tales often shared by the spacers visiting Benbow.

        "Yelatos, Missie Hawkins," announced the barker, a brittle Ammonite with random tufts of needles along his puce shell.  "Fifteen pounds for a half bargain, now, five purps a sixpenny bit.  Cheap today, stock up before the start'a autumn!"  His voice had changed as his gaze slid from snagging her attention to bellowing quick, auctioneer phrases so as to draw shoppers nearer, countless uneven red eyes sparkling enticingly in time with deep-voiced speech.

        Derailed thusly for a mere moment or two, she leaned just so over the piled brown yelatos, shifting Mandi slightly to grip her better at the new angle, and trickled her fingertips down the rippled curve of one.  She engaged temporarily in a simple conversation of niceties with a sun-faced woman looking through the perfectly ripe purps.  The easiness of the words did a wonderful job of carefully tucking away her unexplained anxious feelings, as though for some reason even the hinted sign of a cyborg could push her on edge – and the hand could very well have been that of a robot, though she did doubt it for a variety of reasons – and she knew there was a thing relatively important she had forgotten.  Turning to face Mandi, she smiled quickly and stood, only now realizing her hair was utterly at the mercy of the wind, long brown locks exposed by her abnormal lack of a modesty cap, and she clapped her unfilled hand to her thick hair.

        "Missus Dunwoody," she spoke under her breath, not insulting but as in discovery.  "She must still have my cap."  She twisted about, pastel blue slippers made yet another shade of yellowed brown as she moved to pick out the clothing booth on the other side of the street, and Mandi added her sixpence of thought, babbling incoherently and yet somehow wisely.

        It was as she went to find again the familiar green of Mrs. Dunwoody that she found sufficient reason to stop, having caught in the corner of her eye a flurry of activity while the shadowed spacers she had spotted disappeared into the crowd, their very movements speaking of purpose.  _Pirates,_ she thought with a trill of terrified excitement, more the former than the latter, and she impatiently tossed from her that implausible idea; pirates simply did not come to planets like Montressor, too small to have an individual representative in the Imperial Parliament and far too poor to have riches or splendor.  Perhaps what truly caught her eye was the hand's accompanying bits of cybernetic achievement, an appendage attached to an arm that had a confusing puzzle of items in the lower half, and the piston composing the right – shin a metal peg – leg's knee.  What kind of man she wondered with surprise and a degree of distaste, imagining the ghostly waifs as in the spacer tales, would find himself in such need of replacement limbs?

        "Da-mauhm," Mandi giggled, clapping her hands and burying her face, overwhelmed by her energetic happiness, in the soft crook where neck flowed into shoulder.  She whispered a few unintelligible secret's to Sarah's unclothed collarbone and then pulled back professionally, her lips splitting into an enormous grin of sheer wonderment at what was surely life in general whilst her embracing watcher pushed a collection of dark strands out of her inky eyes.

        "Curious fellow, i'in't he?" the barker asked conversationally, allotting himself a breather and hurriedly drinking a cracked glass of water.  "Still, he's awful big, sorta guy you have nightmares about pissin' off.  Reckon he's seen fights that would make the Procyon armada 'shamed of themselves."  He nodded briskly, setting the glass down as his needles bristled in preparation of resuming his yelling job, and added one last comment in before Sarah could do much of anything, "He's looking for the Benbow Inn, actually, so mayhap you'd be of some help, Missie Hawkins?"  The Ammonite grinned, satisfied with his passing of this knowledge, and threw his voice headlong into his career of crying bargains, foods, and prices as loudly as he might and as far as he could.

        "Yelatos, fifteen pounds at half the price!" became the litany supporting her reality as she began picking out large strings of dried vegetables, telling herself there was naught unusual in that someone sought the inn.  Cyborg or no cyborg, if he was from the etherium or elsewhere, it was wholly understandable, or so she told herself in spit of knowing that anyone asking for her inn by name without having been to Montressor was – odd.  And still in the dustiest corner of her mind lurked a patient thought, waiting outside the realm of conscious thought for whenever it would be needed.

        "Mandi, don't stick that in your mouth," she scolded, effectively pushing away any other thoughts though she remained a bit uneasy.  She remembered, as she stuck her fingers into the warm, resistant mouth clamped around a small fruit she had crammed in over her tiny tongue, a night of fire and a dead buccaneer on the floor of her inn.  They were connected by words she had let vanish in the swamping river of forgetfulness, whatever they were, and she sighed, feeling the line of her shoulders drooping as tired exasperation came.  "Well, I'm overreacting now," she laughed gently, tapping her thumb on the chubby incline of Mandi's chin before she tugged the mangled fruit out with a deflating popped sound.

        A peculiar hiss, light and nearly inaudible as she heard it along the edge of her hearing, shifted into the air, releasing form a piston's breath, and as she found herself more preoccupied with digging a second floon berry out of Mandi's mouth, a disarming brogue all but laughed at her, "Are ye havin' yerself some trouble with the littlun?"  She almost turned, but Mandi had a playfully fierce expression, her one tooth jabbed deeply through the sticky skin of the dark orange berry, and as Sarah had one too many memories of an uncooked floon berry's side effects, she had more priority for prying it out.  Mandi shook her head, frowning and sucking her lips in to keep her from taking away the sweet prize, and managed to evade with some success the fingertips picking at her mouth until a large paw descended to pin her head motionless.  "T'ere ya go, pup," the voice continued, an amused quality to it, and she gratefully plucked the berry out of Mandi's shocked mouth. 

        "You're going to have a bad tummy-ache," she informed the pouting babe, using the wrist of her sleeve to dab away a trickle of stick floon juice.  "Thank you," she started next, turning to face her unwitting savior as the barker's heavy voice continued to extol the virtues of his naturally grown selection.  Sarah felt her limbs stiffen, clutching Mandi a little tighter, not quite with horror or malignant fear, but with an off-guard surprise at the sight of a slitted golden eye set into a hardy bear-like face, and she blinked several times before remembering her manners.  "Sorry," she apologized, nearly sheepish while that unnatural eye slid shut in a metal curve.  "But thank you.  If Mandi had swallowed that," she let it hang forebodingly, giving a mock-glare to the sulking child.

        "T'is only what any man should do," he replied in his lilting, disarming voice, sweeping a tri-corner hat from his brow and bowing his head forward slightly in a flattering manner.  She smiled a little, as Mandi uttered a fascinated syllable of curiosity, and absently grasped a dry yelato in her hand, testing it by habit for any weak spots that might be signs of internal rotting.  "A lovely day t'be out in the open, naow, t'isn't it?" he continued openly, doffing his hat back over the black 'kerchief tied securely over his broad head.

        He was a massive man, a sort of powerful grizzly figure that had her conscious of her own small height, and the right side of his body – from arm and leg to eye and ear – was heavily accented by the presence of cybernetic wires and cylinders hooking artificial metal accessories to his skin.  She could tell, as she had spent many evenings catering to and speaking with spacers, there was a worn strength present, the kind many etherium-faring men and women developed through months and years of continuous traveling.  For a quiet moment between his words and her reply, she thought she could see a constant thread of tampered menace kept carefully in check, a thing she found oddly bewildering in place of silently threatening, but when she blinked, and spoke, it was gone and she wondered if it had ever been there at all.

        "Yes, it is pretty today," she agreed, motioning to one of the stall's workers for a large wicker basket, "but it'll be raining soon."  She took the basket with her loose hand, accepting the weave and stepping cautiously backward after easing Mandi protectively to the side, and began quickly dropping the dried vegetable strips she had chosen in it along with yelatos.  "I owe you a few pennies," she called to the man seated in a small chair back from the stall, glancing woefully at the two berries squashed unceremoniously in the dirt.  

        The cyborg man beside her made a sound like a deep laugh, his skeletal hand stretching metal fingers to snatch up a purp, and she lowered her head with a quiet laugh of her own, dropping another yelato into the waiting depths of the cheap woven basket.  "What brings you to Montressor anyway?" Sarah asked, joggling Mandi just enough to prevent another berry incident.  Her asking was a polite norm in meaningless conversation, much like his off-hand comment on the clear weather, and she gave little heed to the quickly thoughtful look that showed on his rough features.

        "Biz'ness, ma'am," he replied following a moment, "only of a most unusual sort, if ye be understandin' the drift I take."  His face had a dual quality to it, easy to broad smiles and exaggerated expression, but she could nearly imagine his not finding much difficulty in sharing anger of a kind; as for now, he was grinning in a most charming fashion, and she was pleased, having gone far too long since meeting a friendly soul.  "An' I don't want to be rude or the like, but I were wond'rin' if ye might know as to where the Benbow Inn rests?" he asked vaguely as Mandi entertained herself with a chorus of raspberry tongues and singsong babbles.

        There was no reason for her to feel anything resembling unease after he asked such an innocent question, but she still kept silent, appearing as though she was considering the query while settling the basket on the dirt, patting Mandi's back.  A soft noise, that of a small blade flicking free of a slick container accompanied by the subdued whirr of gears quickly twisting, and she glanced through a gravity-drawn tangle of her usually bound dark hair.  One of his fingers had flipped away into the shelter of his mechanical arm, exchanging positions with a carefully honed silver knife that he calmly sued to peel off the sturdy skin of the gleaming violet purp, and the cyborg eye was barely visible past his profile turned to her.  She felt, suddenly, as though he was judging her, and not her appearance but what little he could determine from who she was, as if he could almost see strengths and weaknesses writ in the innate body language none could suppress.

        "The Benbow Inn?" queried the barker, heaving a thick breath as he grabbed up another glass of water to cool his sore throat.  "Four more for sixpence," he added, pointing a thin finger at the almost entirely skinned purp before he returned to his original thought.  "You picked the right person to ask.  Missie Sarah Hawkins here," now he pointed at the slender woman balancing the red-shaded Tentaclan, "owns and runs it."  He was again satisfied, nodding his head and retreating, and he swallowed a full lung's swing of air to power his bellowing cries.

        "Aye ya do, do ya?" said the cyborg in an impressed tone, mechanical eye swinging open to reveal a curved strip of bright yellow.  He tossed the skinned fruit from his left hand to the graceful metal of his right, catching it as the blade clicked into shadows and the finger was once more exposed to light.  Holding his natural paw out to her, a lopsided grin appeared on his brown face.  "Name is John Silver," he said by way of introduction, and Sarah felt sure there was more to it than that, for he looked every inch the captain in a way quite unlike Jim or Amelia.  "Me'n my crew, we're lookin' fer a place to be stayin' for abou' a month."

        Mandi clucked her tongue experimentally, testing this new sound she could make, as Sarah shifted her from her left arm to her right elbow, hugging her gently but firmly, and the brunette clasped his hand with surprising strength for a woman her size.  "I'm Sarah Hawkins," she smiled, foot nudging the large basket before her, "as you already know.  And I've closed the inn for the rest of the week, for cleaning and stocking."  She shrugged apologetically, drawing her hand from his much bigger one, and picked free several bunches of oddly colored carrots to drop on the basket's growing pile of food items.

        "Ah, that's a pity, isn't it?" he commented sagely, biting into the soft, peeled purp decisively, and she allowed herself a small sound of agreement.  "Aye," he continued, a crafty glint in his black eye, "we been hearin' many a good word about this place o' yours.  Why, me lads an' I would've been willin' t'even work somethin' while down here on Montressor."  He took another large bite from the purp, the brown pit just barely visible, a rippled brown core stained by the fruit's juice, and feigned indifference though he spared a wink to Mandi, who was straining her fingers out for the half-eaten purp.

        Sarah paused, rubbing her thumb thoughtfully over the rough curve of one of the yelatos and letting it fall into the basket, and absently patted her palm along Mandi's small round thigh, earning a giggling squeak.  "Mister Silver," she started carefully, lifting another one of the many tubers and finding it marginally soft and thusly too soft to be use to her, "do any of the men in your crew happen to cook?  My assistant chef left this morning and I really need a new cook."

        "A cook, ya say?" his muzzle split into a wide grin as his cyborg eye glowed a bright shade of yellow.  "Th' Fates must be smilin' on us both, as I jus' so happen to be somethin' of a cook meself.  My crew won't be stayin' long, though, so if'n--"

        "Cleaning," she interjected, cutting him off effectively as she hoisted the basket with one tensing arm, sliding it over a bare rectangle on the stall's display for it to be weighed by one of the bustling workers.  "I do have a lot of work my robots won't be able to do, and I can let you all have room and board in exchange for labor."  She nodded to the worker who took the basket, rubbing her hand gently along Mandi's shoulder when the child sighed and rested her forehead quietly in Sarah's neck, and began again, turning to face the gleaming cyborg, "My inn is on one of the plateaus to the side of the town," she gestured to a pillar of eroded sandstone topped with spiraling docks and the hardly visible inn itself, "and if you can get there before sundown, that'd be wonderful."

        The bear of a man, swiftly slicing with his teeth the remainder of the purp, grinned in a way that was somehow inappropriately humorless and letting the pit fall to the dirt, said in concurrence, "An honest deal, that, an' I figgered t'at might be yer lovely inn a-nestled way up there."  He tipped the foremost corner of his hat in a most gentlemanly manner, the strange grin still on his swarthy face.  As he turned to leave, to vanish as best he could with his height and build into the swarm of beings, he pulled a shilling piece from somewhere unnoticed, tossing it lightly to the pale wood of the stall.

        "Why," Sarah found reason to ask before he could fully turn from her, the smooth, familiar lines of her palm soothingly stroking the back of Mandi's dozing head, "did you need to ask where the Benbow was if you already knew?"  It hung in the air as he – Silver, she remembered – paused, glancing back over his bulging cybernetic shoulder, metal eye shining an unreadable strip of watchful gold at her in a way that was both neutral and foreboding, and she waited patiently, wanting to know what was no doubt an obvious answer.

        "'T'is a simple t'ing, lady hawk," he replied in his accented voice, disappearing with unexpected ease into the shifting crowd.  "Who would lose hisself the chance t'see a lady as glowin' as yerself?"  And then he was gone, inexplicably unable to be spotted in the crowd except for one early glimpse of a hulking figure in engulfing black, as the peoples of Montressor and spacers from Crescentia blocked him from easy view.

        "Eight'n pounds'n five shillin's, ma'am," a small worker shyly piped up, pushing the weighed basket gently to her, and she started, digging into a pouch sewn to her dress' hemmed waist.  Counting out the proper coins with furious speed, feeling Mandi drawing ever closer to a full headlong sleep, she smiled quickly and exchanged coinage for the relatively heavy basket, grunting nearly unladylike at the added weight when she worked it in to her grasp.

        "Have a wonderful day!" Sarah informed the worker cheerfully, adjusting both Mandi and the groceries with deep care.  Sighing, she mused regretfully to herself, "Might as well finish shopping tomorrow."

-

        "What th' devil did ye blinkin' think ye were doin', Mist'r Harltan?" Silver asked in his best conversational captain voice, which consisted for the most part of yelling and his mechanical arm switching out for deadly implements.  At the moment he had a dangerous cutlass pressing sharply to one of Harltan's four necks, a whetted blade that hovered in constant threat near the gulping jugular in his thin throat, and the cyborg eye widened, spiraling into a deep fiery red that glittered with barely controlled rage.  "We ain't here fer ye t'be tellin' ev'ry daft idiot y'see what we came lookin' for," his voice was raising into a powerful, quelling roar, "an' if ye do the same again, I'll gut ya on th' spot!"  The red glow launched out into a spike, fully spread presentation of the faux eye.

        Harltan promptly broke into a cold sweat as the rest of the crew shifted uneasily, understanding silently that the painful promise was also being made to each and every one of them, huddled on the fringes of the closing bazaar as the sun set in a collapse of brilliant rainbow shades.

        "Now, I found us all a place to be stayin'," he said quietly, rich with a cold note of coming danger, "an' we'll be workin' outta the inn 'til we find the cur and string 'im up by his entrails."  His smile was like tangible ice, a dagger spun of deep and old hate in his dark, animalistic face.  "Don't you be makin' me mad, boys."

--

--

Notes:  Oh, dear - *sighs* very long-winded, no?  I'm not too sure if it's as good as it could have been, but I'm leaving tomorrow and won't be on-line for the next few days, so why not just post the first part?  I did, obviously.  Think I wrote too much?  Do tell.  ^-^  I keep fearing this first part seems contrived...but I'll be explaining and fleshing out more in the next part, don't worry.  On a scarier note, I've been handwriting this and then typing (and editing) it, and I can't feel my left wrist anymore.  Ah well.  Who needs bone marrow anyway?  Also scary is the fact that I didn't get to write everything I wanted to in this part.  Yes, be frightened.  As a last thing, I do know what I'm doing – if there's no explanation for why Silver's on Montressor, it _will_ be eventually revealed.

Joke:  I've been wanting to use 'lady hawk' in a TP story (in reference to Sarah, of course!) for some time now, and I finally have!  The term is taken from the wonderful 1980s movie of the same name, in which a lady and her lover are cursed that, during the day, she is a hawk and by night, he is a wolf.  I love that movie.  ^^

Thanks to everyone who reviewed: _western-pegasus _(^^ - glad you liked it so much!  I really do love your fic, by the way), _Aahz _(as fast as I could!), _wolfarine_ (well, I finished part one, even though it feels hurried to me…), _JuuChanStar_ (I've been meaning to read your fic, but I haven't had the time – I will as soon as I can, okay?  ^^), _Weirdlet_ (oh, I certainly hope this was as good as the teaser), Silverfan (continued, and I'm glad you enjoyed), and _S.M._ (this is the first part!  I've done my best – sort of – and it's up decently soon, no?).  All of your comments are very appreciated.  ^-^

Disclaimer: Alas, I still can't claim any of the characters (other than the ones that are very obviously original), and I apologize for warping them in any way.  


	3. Part Two: I

Happenstance:

Part Two 

--

        "Oh," Sarah uttered, frustrated, when the batter was stirred just a little too roughly and it spilled over the deep bowl's cleanly cut edge.  Annoyed, she let drop the wooden spoon and rummaged for a faded cloth with which she might scoop the batter, sticky and still sporting thick lumps of solid flour, off the spice-spattered cloth of her apron as a regretfully energetic Mandi toddled past in slow, clumsy steps.  "Mandi, what are you," she stopped, knowing her words would be wasted, and tossed the rag aside, quickly striding up to the babe and lifting her easily up from the kitchen's dusty wooden floor.  'Come on, Mandi," she scolded, clasping her gently in a strong band of her arm and standing, rustling skirts collapsing back about her heels.  "If you can't stay still then I'll have to put you somewhere safe."

        "Bah oohm," replied Mandi in warbling reply, her fist popped in her mouth and waggling happily about.  She hesitated, dropping her fist and glancing up to look at Sarah's traditionally harried night face, and made a curious sound by pursing her thin lips, reaching up to tentatively brush clammy suckers over her lower cheeks.  "Dabah," she said, curving her fingers and causing the suction cups to turn, sleek edges tickling soft skin.  Growing disinterested, her attention wandered to gazing fascinated at the kilns until she was plopped unceremoniously into the waiting wood embrace of a tall chair, the cedar arms sturdily pinning her in place.

        "Now, I'm not mad at you, cutie," Sarah told the infant Tentaclan, reaching along the back of the high chair and questing with blind fingertips for the slender tethering ropes, "but it isn't safe for you to be racing all around the kitchen.  You really don't want to smack into a stove, believe me."  She smiled, having found the ropes, and brought the weaves forward to knot the ends as best she could together around Mandi's abdomen, not exceptionally tightly, but durable enough that she would not wriggle free as she would be wont to do.  "There we go," she said lowly, kissing the down-turned forehead wrinkling with puzzlement.  "You're safe and I can move my supplies down the counter to be near you, see?"  She straightened, hands smoothing along her apron and skirts whilst she allowed herself a satisfied expression, quickly turning to flee to her abandoned spot and retrieve the sundry items of cooking left there.

        Curious and very trusting, Mandi was not quite sure what to make of her sudden mild bondage, unused to being cornered and securely fastened in a decisively inanimate spot with nary a hug or hide in sight.  Sarah was effectively hidden by the tall, stocky curves of the heavy kilns and the chair was hard as well as unpleasantly chill through the fabric of her thigh-cut trousers, and with a triggering whimper followed by a swift agitated flash of her gills, Mandi let loose her heartbroken first wails.  She wept openly and thickly, sticky clear tears passing in swelling courses down her round cheeks, and her accompanying sobs were both loud and pointedly noticeable.

        "Mandi!" she was scolded in an exasperated tone by the swarthy-haired woman that had swerved once again into view, balancing a wide assortment of bowls, paper sacks, and various utensils in her dangerously stuffed arms.  "You've been cranky all afternoon, you know, and I," she cautiously sidestepped an obedient robot that came bearing a storage bin filled with dirt and scraps gathered from but one booth, "don't want to be rude, but it's not helping me much."  A cascading sort of noise informed her of the robot's callous dumping of a shifting miniature landscape composed from dusty dunes and speckled foodstuff ruins.  She tried to quickly form some sense of order in a hasty deposit of her cooking ware on a bit of counter near to the yet sobbing Mandi.

        "Oh fine," Sarah said a bit more grievously than she truly felt, rubbing a rag hard against her apron in a despairing afterthought of perhaps managing to flick away the clinging batter.  She smiled at Mandi, who hiccupped miserably and tossed her head back so as to scream her abject sorrow with greater conviction, and rubbed a fingertip strongly over her temple as though her pulse pounded in raging tempest there, her smile fading just a little.  It had been nearly twenty years since she honestly had found herself dealing with a cranky, desperately agonized child of such a young age, and though Jim – by way of having been an only child in a somewhat dysfunctional household – was still capable of moody bursts, he no longer tossed himself about and bellow disheartening cries as Mandi currently was.  "I'll go see if your muma is back yet, okay?"

        Mandi arched back in the high chair, screaming yet in shrill, painful tones as she fought uselessly with the unmoving knots and Sarah laughed out of an emotion akin to reminiscence mingled with exhaustion.  Completely unimpressed with this seemingly unsympathetic display, the child fell to hopeless murmuring whimpers sprinkled soulfully throughout her gut-wrenching gasps, clawing ineffectively at her wholeheartedly despised restraints.  "Mawin!" she cried in childish, dramatized anguish, accepting with great sulkiness and a dour pout the swift kiss the self-possessed woman gave her cheek in passing.

        Sarah tickled Mandi's short, dark locks as means of temporary farewell and swiftly turned to level her finger toward the robot whizzing back to the waiting door, speaking and enunciating as clearly as she could, "Stay here and watch Mandi."  There was an ensuing pause in which the robot hesitated, the voice command smoothly overriding the program to clean and shine, and it shuffled a quietly whispering noise of affirmative understanding.  She sighed, wiping at her face in case stains or crumbs of some sort were perhaps along her skin.  "Thanks," she breathed dryly, motioning open the door and rubbing her palms habitually down her mildly dirtied apron.

        The inn was sparsely populated this eve of nine o'clock, with only a few guests who had applied earlier in the week for overnight stays between ships, and with so few diners as five, she had no need for her paid staff to find themselves working the night shifts.  As it was, the robots were busy carrying in their stubby, glowing metal arms tools with which to clean, or they carried the scant dishes completed and ready to be delivered to the individuals scattered through the dining area.  A few subdued noises emanated from the corners and stairs wherein her mechanical workers had discovered deeds that called them to sweep, shine, and inspect with an impeccable thoroughness that made them so powerfully efficient at what they did.

        She had a screaming babe in the kitchen, though, making it near impossible for her to allow time enough to even consider watching how her most helpful – she thought so guiltily, as even the most advanced of non-personality robots could not replace actual living contact – employees were functioning.

        "Has anyone seen Rosa come in?" she called loudly in question of the easily counted souls, jabbing her foot in the doorjamb to avoid losing all contact with the violently saddened babe within.  This was said before she realized in a crystal reflection of foresight that each of the beings waiting in the inn were not from Montressor, much less Benbow, in origin.  Wincing as she held a hand palm out apologetically, she made to clarify in a wry, almost self-deprecating tone, "She's a Tentaclan, about seventeen or eighteen years.  She was wearing yellow when she came in, and I haven't seen her since, so," she bit back a groan at her rambling, sufficing to brush hanging brown strands pf hair from her itching cheeks, a new modesty cap having been procured at an earlier time.  "Well – _oh_ – right," she rolled her blue eyes, laughing once, and then repeated with some hope edging into her voice: "She's a Tentaclan, folks."

        A stately, but quite elderly Xenusian man turned stiffly in his chair, the embroidered velvet of his breech-coat fairly glowing in the extensive system of lamp- and solar-light as his four peering eyes blinked owlishly behind an ingeniously designed sort of spectacles with a matching, fitted optic for each eye.  Touching his miraculously spotless napkin absently to his mouth, features set deep into the thick and enchantingly wise wrinkles lining his exposed skin, he asked in a pondering tone of thoughtful voice, "A ban on tents, you say?"  He sighed, picking sympathetically at the scattered remnants of his flambé seafood dish, and slowly shook his head in a manner of glum, wonderfully rooted sadness.  "Those poor campers," he remarked sadly, stabbing a decent amount of the few tiny shrimp on his plate and eating it as he continued to shake his head with great sorrow.

        Sarah paused, fingers woven into the loose tendrils of the long bangs framing her strong face, and after the confused surprise quickly faded, chuckled as she shook her head slightly with the unforeseen moment of amusement.  "Don't worry about it, sir," she stated loudly to ensure he would understand the words.  Crossing the floor, the sewn hem of her skirts brushing the floorboards in forerunning swoops before her delicately slippered feet, she leaned over to gather his various stained dishes, taking a moment to check carefully that her doing so was acceptable.  "It's all right if I take these back, right?" she asked clearly, balancing his drained glass of a heady purp wine on the trio of stacked porcelain dishes.  "Ah," she murmured briefly, catching the edge of the glass before the entire lot could fall to the floor, "don't fall."

        "I'm not very partial to balls myself," he replied congenially, wiping thoughtfully at his mouth a second time and primly folding the napkin with curt movements.  "And," he made sure to add with a grandfatherly smile as she fought to keep the dishes from trembling free of her grip, "it's quite kind of you to clear my dishes."  He reached absently toward the elegant stalks of his eyes to adjust the wire frames shielding each gleaming dark orb with aged, mildly quaking fingers; his continued smile was a distanced if friendly one, somewhat unfocused and what Jim would resolutely proclaim to be _out there_, as though he had a deep, half-remembered thought catching and holding in a captivating embrace his mind.  If such was the case, his marvelous thought was kind enough to grant him the necessary comprehension to nod his head gratefully and slowly scrape out of his chair to wobble steadily in the waiting direction of the stairs.

        "Be careful," Sarah called quickly, inclining her head with serene respect to the other guests before moving in a worried fashion to the abandoned kitchen and the temporarily forgotten Mandi dearest.  T'was then that a bellowing wind lashed about the inn, rattling the metal sheeted shingles of the roof and storming in howling waves around the walls, as an ocean breaking angrily along a sandy stretch of beach.  Dust could be seen scouring the one large bay window she had specifically requested be built anew those seven years past, a haze of breeze-tossed dirt that rained like hail no longer seen on the dusty, torrent-ridden surface of gloomy Montressor.  "Oh, for," she muttered, breaking off under the exasperated exhale of her breath.  With a mental apology to grief-stricken Mandi, she clutched the departed Xenusian's dishes in a loosely firm grip, balanced just so to avoid spilling any trace bits left down the front of her already stained apron, but not wanting to ruin the dishes by dropping them.

        Making a way quickly to the window, sparing one hand from her dutiful burden to raise her skirts off the floor as she had no particular desire to stumble and possibly crash recklessly into the hard floorboards of her inn, she shifted the weight of the dishes carefully.  She moved her hand to clutch the winding handle, ornate and decorated with carved metal flowers that curved along its gentle swells, and while keeping her clumsy armful of dirtied dishes relatively balanced, began cranking it with stiff thrusts of her palm.  As the swooping holo-paint descended from the top and ascended from the bottom, a brilliant and gaily lit piece meant to resemble a sun-dappled meadow, she allowed her grip to grow softer, leaning to gaze searchingly through the slat of window left unchanged.

        Frowning near imperceptibly, trying to see farther through into the sand-struck night coated by a sinking well of black ink, she bit back a disappointed murmur and sighed with a form of self-scolding tone in it.  She pulled cautiously back from the window's waiting stretch of peeking vision and catching the side of the dishes once they threatened to overbalance hastily, caught the crank again and wound it smoothly in but a few strokes.  With the glowing meadow thus exposed to the delight and comfort of the inn-dwellers, she bounced the dishes higher into a more manageable grip and hurriedly swept over the floor, a faint and nearly unseen layer of dust gathering along her already dusted dark blue hem.  She gently shoved the door open, turning that she would be pushing the thick slab of wood aside with her back, and swirled around, rustling to the unusually night empty sink to deposit, gracefully, her precarious load.

        "Bah, um-mau," Mandi sang, infinitely calmer than before as she flicked her fingertips fairy tale-style at the oblivious robot stiffly performing its allotted duty as sentry.  Tear rivulets were stark yet on her chubby red face, a staining glittered testimony of her earlier tantrum that remained stickily clinging down the swollen curves of her giggling cheeks, but the babe paid little head to the remains.  She was far more interested in her attempts at distracting her metallic guard, swaying its attention from solemnly watching to some form of reaction, making strange noises by popping and burbling her lips, fingers daintily swaying past one another.  "Ah, ahn," she intoned, glancing up at the woman drifted next to her and beaming a jagged sort of smile at her.  With grandiose pomp, she abandoned the robot to hoist her arms dramatically up to Sarah, who was softly smiling, and making keening sounds in request of being freed and lifted.

        "Since you're being so polite about it," Sarah teased, clapping her palms together and swaying to the front of the chair, leaning away from the happy kicks Mandi was performing without any rhythm.  "I'm very proud of you," she continued in a flattering tone, nimbly working her fingers under and through the woven threads of the knotted rope, "for getting quiet all by yourself."  As she picked at the final loop, much to Mandi's noisy squealing delight, she nudged the still guarding robot gently with her sheathed foot, giving it cause to spring a chattering line of whirring gears in deep timber whilst it backed a pace on clicking wheels.  "Do what you need to," she instructed the robot firmly, dismissing is as she unwound the ropes and caught Mandi mid-lunge, cradling the babe before she could slip to the floor.

        Bouncing Mandi on her hip, tendrils of her own brown hair tickling out of the protective, shielding white of her cap, Sarah judged the small number of dishes in the sink with a hastened glance and decided she might as well wait until her guests had licked the last inkling of sustenance from fork, spoon, or plate.  "Let's go check the rest of the rooms, hm, Mandi?" she sighed, and maneuvered back out the door after a flinching look sent to the drying batter on the counter.  "Who's to say if the cyborg's men won't show up?"  She tried a smile as Mandi sucked contentedly at the sleek crimson of her wrist, moving her head in tiny acknowledgements to the peaceful diners, a silver symphony of clinking glasses and crackling ice swaying in her subtle wake, and she picked her feet up to the first step.

        She ascended with delicate care, shifting her arm so her elbow cradled Mandi to her hip, the joint pressing below her plump rear, and her scalding-reddened hand cupping the downy soft hairs of her head.  She clamped her other hand on the guard rail to use as guidance and balance on her way to the second, homey floor.  It required some effort, trying to keep Mandi in a safe, cuddling embrace and stepping flat on her slippers in pursuit of not stumbling over her skirts, and she tightened her fingers over the sleek wood, digging lightly in for purchase.  "Here comes one of the 'botties," she baby-spoke quietly in a near-singing voice, jostling the curious child as she slid closer to the rail and paused, letting the robot clink laboriously down.

        "Hold up, Mandi-cutie," she warned briefly, shifting about to face over her shoulder the metal being descending the lamp-glowing steps, and she then quite easily addressed the robot: "Could you,"  she stopped, reminding herself the brand of server robots tidying the Benbow Inn had no artificial intelligence, no personality, no drive to understand the subtle demand in a polite question.  "Please," she began patiently, smiling lopsidedly her unintended slip, "gather seven more Cleaners and collect the dishes.  Start program," she hesitated to quickly thinking over the few command numbers she had somehow memorized, "five-oh-bee."  She smiled swift farewell, watching in a poised moment as it booped and recalibrated for this change in priorities.

        "Jim's much better at remembering those things than I am," she laughed a little, puckering and kissing the tender fat on her charge's face.  A delighted squeal came in response, accompanied by a pudgy, playful slap of a soft palm to her cheek, and she dipped Mandi quickly in turn before smoothly tucking her round child body back into hugging place.  "You're so silly, Mandi," jested Sarah, picking her way on to the platform up top.  "But we need to make sure you won't go around just slapping people like a clown, don't we?"  

        Mandi's sincere reply consisted of stringing together a confusing rope of babbles, smacking lips, and assorted noises attained by happily twirling her fingers about in her mouth to Sarah's amusement.

        The second floor – wide and sporting several responsible, though somewhat compact, rooms with doubled bunks – was specifically designed for any live-in workers she might find herself needed to support.  Emeshul had been the only one as of late, what with many of her current employees having a home of some form in the town of Benbow her inn resided on the outskirts of, and she supposed she would arguably only need to peep in on his abandoned quarters.  

        Crossing the floor and adjusting Mandi in her arm's sleeved grip, she did such punctually, clinically checking the fold of the dull red bedspreads on both upper and lower bunks in spite of having primly folded them herself as one of her solemn duties upon waking.  She tapped her fingertips thoughtfully on the meagerly stuffed blanket shielding the remaining sheets beneath, sending a disparaging glance to the hall before changing her gaze quite seriously to look the dedicatedly squirming Mandi directly in her rounded face.

        "Sarah was very stupid," she informed her; Mandi merely blinked and studied her blankly, a few more months of growing needed until she could conceivably understand the words precisely.  "I should've never tried to hire complete strangers at the marketplace."  She sighed, juggling Mandi lightly from one arm to the other, and deciding there was little if anything to be done about the typically ordered fashion of the cleaned room, simply left.  "After all," she continued, sweeping the fingers of one hand gently through the fine black mist of the child's short wavy locks, "for all I know, they could be," a pause for dramatic effect that would be lost on Mandi anyway, "_pirates!_"  She laughed, pleased with the playful disbelieving joke in her words, as she strolled to the flight of stairs idly trailing from second floor to the berth of third.

        Mandi said something inquisitive along the infantile lines of: "Bao mamumwa?", and putting just the right emphasis on the last little sound to make it double effectively as an exclamation of sorts.  Then a smile, brilliant and heartily innocent as though all she could ever need was affection she could win with her sweet looks, and she curled in to Sarah, reaching up to finger the hypnotically weaving strands of hair sneakily untucked from the woman's cap.

        "Not that you noticed," Sarah teased, climbing the polished darkness of the second set of lazy stairs, "Man-di."  She ducked instinctively under an unfortunately low-set stretch of ceiling near the top of the stairs; quite a few areas in the inn had been rebuilt with the smaller stance and much shorter height of the major species of Montressor – from amphibians to Tentaclans to whatever it was, exactly, that the Dunwoody family was descended from – in mind.  Thankfully, though, the ceiling swooped back up in an elegant and slanting angle before smoothing out to channel above along the stubby corridors of the first guest floor of three, with the undecorated wood of her own room securely facing the next pair of upward-seeking stairs.

        "You," she added to Mandi as she carried the tiny babe resolutely, in quick steps, toward the door of plain unchanged pale brown, "slept, remember?  And nearly ate that floon berry, too!  You're very lucky you haven't gotten sick."  It took some finagling and a trying bit of changing Mandi carefully from the crook of one arm to the squeezing warmth of the other before she managed to twist the clean brass knob of her bedroom's door for access with a swift jiggle of her wrist.  "I don't think your muma will be back tonight," she sighed, not wanting to think the worst and so offering up a kind smile, "so I'll just tuck you up in here, okay, cutie?"

        Her room was relatively spare in its decoration, with a simple white-draped bed and rustically easy furniture carved from a sturdy derivative of quarkwood and smoothly glazed for longevity, but the only items of expense or alien beauty were gifts; as if to make up for the troubles he had caused and their problems with finances in his rowdy and quite impossible to contain youth, Jim had found need to continuously send or bring to her a bold variety of trinkets and suspicious artifacts.  Paused in the door with Mandi yawning and poised on her hips, her arms bent lazily over the woman's neck, Sarah could all but see her handsome son posing before her eyes, a beloved mixture of herself and Leland as his sleek blue eyes glittered innocently.  "I'd never steal it, Mom," he laughed cheekily in her imagination, waving some ancient polished statue carved of limestone.  "I just sorta forgot to let customs know I kind had it.  Sorry?" said quite impudently, "But it looks great right here, doesn't it?"

        "Right next to the other weird little doohickeys," she clucked her tongue, smiling privately as she cast away the spun memory of Jim resplendent in a perfection of tailored, collared blue but looking no more than a sheepish sixteen years.  "Anyway, let's get you all up tight in bed, Mandi," she swished, skirts ruffling throughtfully, to the bed pushed in afterthought by na otherwise untouched wall, "and then I can start working out how twenty small robots and me can clean this place, top to bottom, in three days."  She tapped her fingernail briskly on the pudgy tip of Mandi's rose-tinged nose, and said, heaving a self-deprecating cloud of exhaling air, "Remember – don't you go forgetting! – if it seems like a wonderful coincidence, it probably is.  And you know what they say about those, don't you!"

        As she laughed, a quiet sound that shuddered vainly in the fold of her moderately sized room, the infant was struck with the realization of what exactly was about to befall her, instantly balling her chubby hands into equally chubby fists and lashing out with both arms and legs in protest supreme.  One swift scream faded in place of a more sentimentally wrenching – and thusly more strategic – sob, complete with a choked, gawking wail cut short to make passage for her immense tears to smoothly avail themselves along her chin.  She arched desperately, once, in her last vain struggle to be free of Sarah's firm and unwavering grip, heels and back of scalp touching the soft bedspread in disjointed unison before her spin sagged and she dropped fully onto the thickly covered mattress.  "No!" she screamed, the one true word she had any form of grasp over, and proceeded to follow it with nonsensical argument in high volume.

        "Of course, Mandi," replied Sarah neutrally, reaching up toward the head of the sturdy bit of furniture as she neatly folded her leg on it, keeping Mandi under close watch.  "That's a great defense, but keep trying.  Just understand that my hearing's gone when all I do is nod and smile congenially."

        With two pillows in a tentative grip she drew her hand back, plopping one atop the other in order of creating a barricade that stood, somewhat wobbly, an inch or three above Mandi; another two pillows ensued to wall off the right side close to the small child's body, and the two limp, forlorn left at the head were soon piled just so from the fuzzy curve of her black-spiked cranium.  This left but the grandly open space, currently kept safely shuttered by the clothed press of Sarah's knee, at the tiny, quivering feet of Mandi, a reminder that she might find reason to plop another few squarely there.

        "Mandi," she spoke in warning, "you better stay still.  I don't want to have to scold you again, so stay right where it's safe."  She slipped very cautiously from the bed, a faint impression slowly springing back into its original spongy form where her weight had lurched her knee down, and quickly reprimanded Mandi, who had begun to stir her legs in a most unreassuring manner, "Don't you even dare think it, missie; you will stay right there!"  The words might have been lost on her but the tone certainly was not, and Mandi's limbs grew still, though with a nearly tangible air of surly unhappiness.

        Quite a few unused throw pillows adorned a wicker chair she had very nearly forgotten was even in her possession, fluffy, plump objects that were intended to be square-ish but had lost a great deal of their angles with the delicately beaded fabric stretching so at the bidding of the rather exuberant stuffing.  She had been meaning to give them to Katya Kleiner as a thank-you for her nigh six years of sturdy, dependable work, or perhaps as a flamboyant apology to Mrs. Dunwoody for continuous grievances the cycloptic woman professed on a regular basis.  She reflected briefly on such as she gathered the strained, hemmed fluff in her arms, keeping her face turned at all times to Mandi – apparently determined to glower the ceiling into direct submission – in case the small Tentaclan took in mind the idea of mayhap sprawling onto knees and palms to crawl sternly down an edge.  Sarah was in no mood to deal with that sort of catastrophe at any foreseeable point.

        "Right, sulk all you want," she told Mandi sternly, clutching her weary bundle of pillows as she swept daintily to the bed a second time, "but I'm all out of pity, you know, so it's not going to work very well."  She tucked the various smaller pillows into a more manageable position, cast into a mildly lumpy pile that balanced precariously and seemed as though one strong, judicial kick from the prideful babe might give it due reason to topple effectively over.  "See there?  You can't roll out, now, whenever you actually get to sleeping, hm?"  Turning, she spied a discomforting frown crossing the tiny scarlet face, timed just before a pitiful mewl took leave of her small, pursing lips, a decisively ill sort of tinge grabbing hold of the round features about her distressed expression.  "Oh, Mandi!  _Now_ you have a tummyache?"

        Mandi's distraught answer included truly disheartening whimpers, several clenching squeezes of her suckers fingers into pleading fists, and at least one sniffling tear rubbing down her cheek; whatever remnants of irritation had sunk nasty needle claws in Sarah's countenance relinquished their hold with little delay and she immediately shifted her other leg up to join the one she had already propped on the bed.  Reaching over the pillows stacked between woman and child, she splayed her open palm gently atop the curve of Mandi's childishly tubby belly, rubbing the sore area in a soothing fashion as she smiled quietly, reassuring and reminding of her watchful presence.

        "There now," she cooed lovingly, knowing that she would need verbal comfort as much as the stroking palm from Jim's long past experience with floon berries.  "It'll be all right.  Just keep breathing.  It's okay, it won't hurt for long, cutie.  I'm right here…"

-

        When a near hour later she came wearily from the room, gently closing the door on Mandi's snuffling, gawping snores, she stifled an almost exhausted yawn and plucked her modesty cap thoughtfully from her head as she would find no need for it this late an hour; she bunched the cap up with absent squeezes of her hand, tucked the loose and odd ball into the small pocket at the breast of her apron, and hid surprise at seeing one of her paying guests with a pleasant, welcoming smile.  In a manner drawing close to nervous gesture, she picked at the edges of the apron hugging the drooping swell of her skirts, tugging out the ever shifting rivers that were deep, moving wrinkles and lines bulging quietly along the stained pale fabric.

        "Ma'am," she said respectfully in recognition of the middle-aged alien, "I hope you sleep well tonight.  Be careful about the ceiling there!"  She reached a hand forward in a flash of foresight alarm, heel rising as though she might cross the long main hall in time enough to prevent the woman accidentally stepping with gracious, oblivious ease into the low block at the head of the second staircase.  "Ah," she sighed in relief when the woman paused, gingerly pressing a flabby hand to the offending ceiling and carefully levering herself, skirts gathered in the matching hand, to the sprawling platform of the third floor.  "I've been meaning to see if I can get that amended," she confessed apologetically, "but I keep finding reasons to put if off just a little longer."  She smiled, the same sort of near-sheepish exasperation in the expression that Jim routinely expressed with certain members of his entourage; namely, one marginally dysfunctional robot by title of oft-proclaimed B.E.N.

        "Oh, I ken quite weel 'ow t'is," the heavy, thickset alien woman replied kindly, waddling in a manner that was inexplicably dignified to one of the suites, the fold of her wide skirts shuffling and whispering rather noisily.  "Been in such a scrape meself plenty o' times, ye ken."  She nodded gravely, the shapeless flesh of her palm resting gently on her room's door, and seemed to be caught in a vague, distant coil of dreamy individual thought at odds with her aged, maturing presence before she snapped into awareness, such as the case might have been.  "Weel, in any case, lass," she smiled, a quick, guilelessly upturned grimace of her swollen lips, "I'll be getting' to my bedclothes like all the other ha' done.  Ye'd better be getting', too, if'n ye havena been thinkin' o' doing so."

        Sarah took the clinical disapproval of her late night work in stride, nodding pleasantly and smiling in such a way as to encourage the idea that she would not be up to ungodly hours in the morn, scrubbing relentlessly at the underbellies of tables and concocting lists of supplies needed with no end in sight.  "I'll do that, ma'am," she answered politely in a perfectly neutral tone, and after a heartbeat added, in rueful admission, "It's a good piece of advice I should focus on a little more."  The hated, deeply felt tired sense of existence plaguing her yet only served to better remind her of the solemn truth in the foreign woman's advising speech, and she shifted fractionally at the uncomfortable presence of the knot affixed pointedly between her shoulders.

        "Verra weel indee'," the portly woman said with the utmost sincerity, the blunt hard edges of her sausage fingers prodding ever so slightly along the weave of the dark glazed wood.  "Oh, an' I do feel a wee bit ashamed for takin' into my own han's t'let in the gentleman an' lass downstairs," she looked appropriately shamefaced and even a slight chastised, "but I didna wish t'bother you."  She gave one last expression of uncontrollable consolation, sending it over the formless swell of her limp shoulder and quickly sidling her dumpy, squashed mass through the gaping door with a bit of grunting effort and a wheezy, self-amused smile.

        "Lord," Sarah managed, rolling her cloudy azure eyes to the ceiling as if to silently demand an answer or justification from the being whose name she uttered.  A sudden seize of worry struck her gut; she was certain the woman downstairs would be Rosa, but she had no memory of any man that might have reason to accompany her other than Robert of the fractured temper and sharp reflexes.  He was an unpleasant Tentaclan she felt no particular desire to meet again, and she had already determined her erstwhile marketplace companion was not to be coming.  

        It was, of course, somewhat early for her to make any judgment about her late night visitor – why, she worried briefly, would anyone in their sane mind come to as Montressor inn so close to midnight? – but she had been approached by one too many drunks, relatively amoral privateers, and navy personnel with news on any given battle Jim could conceivably have been involved with.  She hoped wholeheartedly it was none of the three.

        "May it be safe," she whispered quickly and efficiently, crossing her front and glancing hesitantly out one of the hallway windows at the pitch darkness of the late night, "and if it is not, please make it so."  With this prayer sent and the Cross' Sign etched before her breast, she anxiously smoothed her palms along the tough rippling cotton of her skirts.  

        Though those very skirts clung awkwardly about her legs and nearly tripped her, she hurried as best she could, slippers padding in hasty succession down both staircases, crossing floors quickly where she found she must.  The muffled sound of something scratching hard on a table was soft enough to be missed, but as she did manage – barely – to catch it and mull over its possible source for but a few seconds, it gave her an opportunity to allow her heart leave to tighten, a dim half-remembrance coming to light: blades on wood made curious rasping sounds, both sleek as silver and coarse as unrefined sand pouring through a weakened sieve.

        _I know that sound entirely too well,_ she thought despairingly as she finally reached the bottom of the first floor's elegantly honey-shaded staircase.  Rounding firmly about and summoning the courage to toss her shoulders back, she steeled her spine in preparation, _and hell if I'll cower at it for the first time.  _In that one fleeting span of time, no more than a few paused seconds she could feel slipping through her mind, she thought wryly on how – Leland and his notions of fatherhood notwithstanding – the Hawkins attitude seemed to reflect a determination to not lie down and accept one's blows.   Unconsciously, she touched the fingers of her right hand to the smooth, worn band of gold adorning her fourth finger, as if to draw strength from the vanished pool of a drowned, sorrowful memory.

        "Mister Calcutta!" she exclaimed, relieved, at the sight of the eternally impatient businessman, lawyer, head of construction, and et cetera, in his curt wording.  "Oh, thank God it's you, I thought – but never mind."  Nerve endings and some collective of muscles in both her knees spasmed, giving her the impression of jelly inhabiting the bones therein rather than a far more dependable marrow, and she clasped a tight grip on the banister swooping as tail to the stair-railing.  "When did you get here?" she continued mannerly, ignoring the currently weakened state of her kneecaps and simply arching her eyebrows attentively.  Her strong chin relaxed somewhat with the knowledge of no knives being waved around or gouging cruelly at her innocent tables.

        "Close to half an hour ago," he snapped, clearly irritable and almost comically windblown, a keening sound coming from his mouth and explaining the origin of the disconcerting sound.  Already a particularly shaggy Canine on the best of still, breezeless days, Calcutta came remarkably close to resembling with admirable accuracy a cloud that been heedlessly pulled in every possible direction, as though it, and he, were spun of taffy.  "I find it hideously deplorable how you, for whatever reason, would have left not only myself but this young lady," he dipped his head, wafting clouds of thick white hair drifting aimlessly at the gesture, to the voiceless, hunched figure of Rosa; she was seated at a table silkily cascaded across with tangible shadows, "waiting in that terrific wind."

        Nearly mocking, the vicious, sand-driven winds roared even louder in smug tones of power and obscene majesty, spiraling heavy drifts of sand to hurly meaninglessly, futilely, along the protective walls and windows of the inn.  It served as a temporary distraction for the three of them: Calcutta from his uncharacteristic anger; Rosa from the quiet depths of her sadness; Sarah from the mundane perplexities of her life.  

        The wind rose and fell in an unending rhythm that escaped comprehension, a mindless howl that consumed the ebony waves of night like a droning army ravaging and devouring an empty landscape already devoid of life's gentler pleasures.  The storms would be coming sooner than she had expected, maybe even by a week, she surmised, momentarily derailed as she fretted over the tightening clench of a fickle deadline drawn steadily by the seasonal Montressor weather.

        "I'm really very sorry, Mister Calcutta," she finally broke the moody silence, drawing both pairs of dark eyes to her.  Calcutta, not the sort of being prone to feuding or even the pettier art of holding a grudge, made a noncommittal, if encouraging, sound deep in his furry throat and began laboriously smoothing back the fur not enclosed in his usual worn business suit.  "But I was getting Mandi, Rosa's daughter, to calm down and sleep, so I was just doing what I could."  She smiled in the genteel, comforting way of a mother nestling with a frightened child during the hailing fury of a lightning storm, acknowledging the thankful relief writ clearly across Rosa's narrow face.

        "I understand, then," answered Calcutta as curtly as was his tock trademark, but the traces of an understanding smile were pulling at his muzzle.  "Now that you are down here, though," he continued, giving up on straightening his ivory fur just a degree shy of managed perfection, "perhaps we can go over the plans for this year's monsoon bridge.  It would hardly do for the Benbow Inn to be stranded from the town, so we'll need to get the construction crew working soon."

        After a short moment of blank bemusement, her face cleared and she uttered, in reflex, "Oh!  Oh, right, of course."  She patted the side of her head, laughing quietly at herself and motioning for the wind-tossed Canine to follow her to a table lit from above by a rotating lamp hooked to the rafters, and she paused, crooking her hand in a welcoming gesture to Rosa.  "Come on out here," she called to the young woman, scooting another chair out as she seated herself.  "I can assure you Calcutta doesn't bite," she hesitated and smiled innocently at the watching alien, finishing, "usually."

        "Arf, woof, and other vicious dog sounds," he replied drolly, face stiff and perfectly bland.  "My bark is much worse than my bite, my dear," he continued as an offer of reassurance to Rosa as, folding her thin arms around her frail, slender body, she slowly, shyly cross the floor in a series of curt, near shuffling steps.  "And in any case, if I should prove a bit nasty in any violent actions, she," he jerked his snouts in the direction of Sarah's chair, "would probably hit me upside the head with the back end of an iron pot."  He coughed inconspicuously and adopting an engrossed expression, studied the fleshy pads lining the tender underside of his paw in exact, predetermined order with a frank, inexplicable interest.  "Hm," he commented dryly, perhaps to avoid upsetting anyone or furthering a new, equally subtle insult for the benefit of the two quite different women.

        "Watch it, Calcutta," Sarah replied pleasantly, wagging her finger in slight disapproval, "don't be rude or childish, because I've seen you as a squalling babe in diapers."  _I _am _getting old, _she thought with a sour punch of mild fear and underlying regret, and resolutely pressed her hand, palm down and fingers delicately spread-eagled, on the table as though it were of great interest to all those present, few though there were.  

        "Speaking of which," she switched tracks only slightly, flipping her hand over and feeling her wrist with her other hand nervously, "Mandi's been a little fussy, Rosa; I think she might've missed her mother being around more than she liked spending time with an old woman like me."  And then, gently, as a grieved look flitted quickly like a dying sunset over the sharp, pretty features of Rosa's face, "Where were you all day?"

        With precise timing the front door smashed open eloquently, crashing in a resonate boom as it swung completely around, hinges protesting the sudden, straining movement and wooden planks shuddering with the blow's force, hitting the wall beside the door swiftly before lazily springing back.  Sarah had let out a short, unseemly shriek and launched quickly up from her seat, fingers instinctively fumbling along the table for anything sharp or blunt – hell, anything not tied or bolted down – that could be improvised as a weapon.  

        Calcutta was recovering from his own startled bark, a paw clapped over his stubby white muzzle in an embarrassed manner she might have teased him about in a slightly less threatening situation; tens of male aliens had poured through the door, all dressed in impeccable, though very worn and patched presently here and there, clothing of breeches, vests, and other pieces of attire best suited to the common spacer.

        Sarah's hand scrabbled along the table, her weight leaning back as she stretched her arm anxiously toward the center, flitting blue eyes gauging the symphony of hard-faced men, some nearly too large to fit ably through the doors and others barely tall enough to sweep their heads along the underside of a table.  "God in heaven," she recited under her breath and strained every joint of her fingers out, "of whom I seek to ask in favor."  

        Rosa tapped an unlit, detached burner, for candles and warming food, toward the innkeeper and her hand closed around it in innate response, grateful for the heavy metal smooth in her grasp.  Were this situation to prove necessary for using it – how she did not know; would she best do to throw it? – she doubted, rightly so, that the burner would be of any particular help, but Sarah found feeling at least marginally defensible was of temporary, bolstering comfort.

        "The inn is closed," she forced out to the large crowd shifting eerily on the far wall.  "If you want lodging for tonight," she made a hesitant motion with her hand, "the Admiral Inn on the Main Square should still be open for the night."  She could not so much see as feel through her dependence on leaning against the table when Calcutta stood, of average height but a stocky-built shaggy menace, and heard the thick heel of Rosa's arched shoes scraping the floorboards.

        "I said," she began anew in a clearer voice, a shadow of annoyance twisting her features as the men ignored her and milled about, a few sitting on her freshly cleaned tables whilst the majority tore chairs heedlessly out to seat themselves on, "the Benbow Inn is closed.  If you still need lodging for the night, the Admiral Inn," she was cut off by a scruffy, thin Feline with scarred leopard features slinking toward her.  _Oh God,_ she thought faintly and tested the weight of the burner at her back, trying to be open-minded and not jump to any foolish conclusions based on the large bite mark fringing his ear where, quite simply, a goodly chunk of the body part was no longer present.

        "We require bed and food," said the Feline in a quiet hiss, earning a sterling look of frustration from the brunette at his easy dismissal of her words.  "There are precisely twenty-one of us who desire board as well as nourishment," he continued, glowing dark ember eyes swiftly gauging her position along with those of her waiting companions, breathing for the three made shallow and near bated.  "We hear tale that you run a concise, fair establishment with a fair hand and soft eye, which is of great interest and most rare."  His blunt, dry voice sapped the words of any value that may have been construed from what seemed to be a compliment, and he followed the statement with a tactless inquiry, "How effective is your establishment, truly, Missus Hawkins?"

        Before he had finished his last double-edged demand, Sarah had found his speech to be surprisingly cultured, his wording rather refined for a spacer whose very appearance seemed to beget an air of hostility; once he had finished the brusque questions, she stiffened indignantly and asked in a calm – God knew how she managed that – voice, "What makes you think the Benbow Inn isn't up to par?"  She noticed, then, as her fingers rubbed nervously along the burnished metal of her claimed object, that his slitted eyes had settled in a disparaging manner on Rosa, causing the small woman to edge closer to her unexpected source of unwitting protection.  "I've been running this inn for twenty years," added Sarah stoutly, almost waspishly, "and I've never been told it's below standard."

        "Such may be the case," retorted the Feline blandly, eliminating the sarcastic sting it could very well have taken by his toneless speech, "but that does little to change the fact that a whore," he gestured impatiently to Rosa, "is standing in plain view."  Rosa quivered, her shoulders rising as though to hide herself from further view, and Sarah stared, hard, with the cold expression that had pressed many a soul into obedience, a tight little convulsion rippling at the edge of her jaw.  "With many spacer crews, it is rather foolhardy to have a tart in such close reach.  Perhaps you should rethink your ignorance of imperial law."

        "The inn is closed," Sarah replied tightly, righteous anger clogging her throat painfully.  Then, louder, as the Feline's emotionless gold eyes flattened and stubby ears swiveled at some unknown sound by the door still ridiculously populated with grimy spacers in oddly clean clothing, "You won't be able to stay at the Benbow Inn!"  She noted with satisfaction as, this time, the motley group slowly churned through her words and at least one – a very young alien, mayhap twenty, with four distinct heads crowning individual necks of differing length – looked crushed and mildly panicked.  

        "The Admiral Inn," she finished in a more abiding tone, "is open and will take you all."  She finished without revealing any particular dislike for the cold Feline or the bordering murderous glares some were granting her, though she did spare a pitying expression for the young, frightened lad.

        She might very well have found need to use the burner clutched in her hand were it but for the unmistakable clacking wheeze of gears and gyros spinning laboriously about, and the not easily forgotten instantly sprang to mind as a last figure stooped in out of the windblown sand still driving into the walls.  "I do be trustin' ye aren't givin' this fine lady here any trouble, naow are ye?" asked the deceptively calm voice that was part of John Silver.  He still managed to tower at least in atmosphere over the tallest of his largely odd crew, the cyborg eye of his visible even across the expanse of the room, a pinpoint of yellowed orange shining balefully in the mechanical pupil.

        "Crikey!" said Calcutta lowly, falling only slightly into the mode of speech his parents preferred.  "Wouldn't feel like getting him mad at you in a game of whist, if you know what I mean."  He sounded nonplussed and Sarah, more occupied with these new and exasperating turns of events, deemed it rhetorical and did not answer.

        "Mister Silver," she said in surprise, fingers slackening around the burner with the mild shock, "what in God's name are you and your men thinking by coming so late to the Benbow?"  What had started as innocent unaware startlement changed into a near waspish outlet for the many tiny stresses of her day, and she leveled a displeased look with the Feline until he took a silent pace back, expression dark but wholly schooled.  "I mean, not that I'm upset about actually having some help for now, but," she tried to find an apt explanation and failing to do so, sighed.  "Long day," she muttered and thankfully no one seemed to have heard but Rosa, who leaned forward to gently take the portable burner.

        Somehow she was not entirely surprised to see the hulking Ursine-related figure did not pause to acknowledge her words, or had deigned not to drawn anymore attention to her already embarrassing outburst.  She leveled a ferocious glare at his crew until, in a mix of sullenness and grudging "yae," they slowly moved to their feet.  "Dinnae go 'bout treatin' anyone here in sooch a manner as might be t'ought rude, lads," he said in a voice that carried but preserved quiet malice.  "An' in most particular," his whole hand, a ruddier shade caused by the lamp's vain light than the pale auburn in the bazaar, motioned in the direction of the trio still warily standing, "ye wil'n't be misbehavin' around the proprietor; we're workin' for her, naow, 'til we tidy up our business."

        This said, he straightened fractionally where he stood in the back, his powerful and as of yet undefined presence made even greater though he was thus far from her, an undercurrent of engrained predatory nature faint in the polite gesture of his tricorner hat bending forward.  "Evenin' to ya, Miss Sarah.  I hope my crew t'weren't," he paused, turning his head silently to menacingly view the assorted heads of his crew to allow meaning to be clear to each, "bein' horrible excuses for gents, though I would not put i' past a few.  I do see ye've met my first, Groonge; he's a pleasant enough chap."

        Making a stab at pronouncing the Feline's name and trying to work it out in opposite of Silver's accent, Sarah said thinly as she felt her shoulders slump, tired, "I've met Grounge, yes."  The Feline hesitated fractionally in his step back to the crew dwindling around their pleasantly irritated captain, an unreadable expression on his thin face; she thought perhaps this insultingly, deceptively emotionless exterior of his was permanent in his actions with others, though she had only just met him herself and was probably not the best of judges for him.  

        With a softening expression, feeling regretful of her unspoken dislike, she continued, "He wanted to know if my inn was a decent enough place.  Which, I assure you, it is."  The hint of a smile touched Grounge's thin black lips, hidden easily by his bland veneer and the thick, mottled fur of his small muzzle, and she smiled in reply, sweeping aside her tangled locks as she turned to face Calcutta and Rosa.

        "Calcutta, I'm really sorry, but I'll have to get back to you about the bridge building," she started quickly, replacing the burner from near Rosa's motionless hand to the central tableau of the table.  The shaggy Canine opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it at her wryly pained look, and reluctantly snapped shut his jaw with a resigned pat at his worn tweed suit in preparation of rejoining the growing dust squall bustling angrily outside.  "I know I need to finance it soon, and I will," she smiled kindly, if a little exhausted, "but I have to make sure my new workers get settled in.  Rosa, Mandi's upstairs in my room, end of the stairs at the third floor.  She's sleeping, so she shouldn't be any problem for you.

        "Now," Sarah continued in the same apparently undying breath, ducked her head as farewell to both as one began precariously weaving to the door with murmured apologies and the other noiselessly picked her way to and up the stairs, "if you'll be so kind as to follow me."  

        She was uneasily quiet for a second, judging the strangely still yet unconsciously discontent air that hung as a mist over the crew as they eyed her, with Silver smiling charmingly if with a narrowed, warning gaze.  She had the oddest sensation of interrupting a dark, covert conversation spun of whispers and low hisses.  Pushing such thoughts away once the second had sinisterly passed, she said briskly, brightly, "I need to get to the stairs, if you'll move, please."

        Unhelpfully, the crew merely continued to stare disjointedly with slitted eyes and sour expressions until Silver, in a disapproving tone, all but snapped, "Well, get to it!  Or are ye like to forgettin' we be workin' for the Lady Hawkins for now?"  A distinctive orange gleam could be determined in the gated blossom of yellow that was his eyes and grumbling to themselves in vainly disguised efforts to be courteous, they shuffled aside to grant her passage to the stairs; she ignored their baleful glares with a grounded dignity, skirts once more lifted protectively over the knobs of her ankles, and smiled quick, relieved thanks to Silver.  "After ye, ma'am.  Lead the way."

        "Well, of course," Sarah smiled, easily and swiftly ascending the stairs in a practiced gait.  More intent on just finishing the stress of the evening than paying full attention to the gangly, patchwork crew of questionable appearance behind her, she thusly missed the hurried, threatening exchanges as the burly captain paused on the first steps and reeled briefly on his men.

        "Do I need ta once more remind each o' ya t'at ye cannot go about doin' t'ings to make any o' us stand out?" he snarled, cutting his voice down while leaving all the dark promise within.  "So long as we ha' not found that blasted devil Canine, we ain't going to get so much as one little inkeep suspicious 'bout our bonny selves.  And if t'e thought crosses a mind o' ya," there came a blood red hint in the faded orange flooding his mechanized eye, "ye'll be joinin' him the day I finished wot he started ten years gone."  With one final quelling glare to set in place each suddenly chilled black heart, he allowed a humorless smile to twist shortly on his face before gracefully striding in the tiny dust falls of Sarah's footsteps.

        "All of the live-in rooms," she called from above, light voice carrying surprisingly well, "are here on the second floor.  There are two bunks per room and twenty rooms in all on this floor, so there's more than enough."  Sarah stopped, pausing a moment as her skirts settled once again and squeezing her eyes shut, quick and hard, to dissuade her weary headache, and with a resigned toss of her shoulders, turned to patiently await the men climbing to the level floor.  "There's one main hall," she directed, lifting an arm to point appropriately, "and four smaller ones going out to the left," another broad movement partnered her words.  "They're a bit small, though, beds and rooms both, but it shouldn't be bad."

        The youngest of the crew so far as she could tell, the young man with four distinct heads slowly waving like a shy palm's idle fronds in a rocking breeze, shuffled slowly forward, but paused before he might pass his grounded captain.  "Nae ta buh rood, marm," he bobbled two of his heads in an anxious bow, the other two speaking with a soft burr, "but i' wood buh nice ta nae geh a sale'peech an' jus' go ta roomin', marm."  

        He sent a nervous look up to his superior, a blanching paleness crossing each face as though the controlled Ursine had delivered a cruel or threatening expression, which she doubted slightly as his features remained schooled but for a fiery pupil in his slotted cyborg eye; she knew not what that might mean and so paid no mind to it.  The youth bobbled all four of his tight, fearful heads respectfully and slunk back as though to vanish once more in the shifting press of the other men crushing into the narrow hallway.

        "Good idea," she noted with an easy smile, feeling maternal sympathy for the gawky, elegant boy-man.  "I'm sure you're all exhausted, so I'll let your captain split you up into groups of two.  Try to stay quiet; there're several guests above and they wouldn't like any problems."  She put enough finale emphasis in the last few syllables to make it clear she, too, was heading to bed and would not take kindly to any nocturnal disturbances, and with a relatively genteel nod, slipped down the main corridor, escaping to the stairs.

        "Ah, Sarah lass," began the disarming twirl of Silver's voice and the massive warm paw arrested her movement with a firm pressure on her clothed shoulder, "a moment'ry word, if ye will."  Taking a glance at the shady crew slowly beginning to argue in the universal ways of men having spent too much time with one another, she hesitated only briefly and, judging it safe enough, nodded.  "I'll be right quick about it, don't be worryin' none," he negated any lingering doubts and calmly pulled his hand from her shoulder.

        "While me'n my boys were in the gen'ral area," he began, his mechanical hand moving in an unconscious illustration, "I t'ought perhaps I might stop in an' visit an ol' friend o' mine."  He seemed to take a calculated break, his cybernetic eye obscured behind its thick metal lid and the dark natural one scrutinizing her as if to test and gauge her response, his broad face lifting slightly in a quizzical, distant manner.

        "'E's a Canine, large fellow, but not ha' as large as my own self," a self-deprecating chuckled and well-placed, smug sort of grin followed.  "Big with short fur and a dark temper like to cullin' a storm, an' black colorin' all about 'cepting for a little white spot," he obligingly flipped his left paw over and clipped a flat metal fingertip in the soft, calloused tan flesh at the swollen base of his thumb, "right there.  His name, as might be suspected, is Black.  Black Dog, tha' t'is."

        All the while he judged her facial expression, the play of muscles in her careworn, but still young face in supposition that she might take in the mind the thought of lying, but aside from one self-conscious twinge she did not notice.  Sarah, in a nervous gesture bred in her blood and passed to her son, absently reached up to touch a long bang framing her face and push it back around her ear, missing the marginally thoughtful look that touched Silver's easily recognized features, and thought in earnest.

        "I don't think I've heard of a Black Dog," she finally admitted with a congenial wincing smile.  "Do you know anything else, maybe?"

        A clinical gleam took hold of his organic eye, as if he still sought solid proof that she was not lying, and after a few seconds, as some of the men began drifting into lot-chosen rooms before fisticuffs could break out, his muzzle split in an easy, burly grin.  "Aye, I do know summat more.  Wouldn't be right, would it, if I shouldn't know anyt'ing about an ol' pal, now."  He winked and continued, a dark figure in his heavy black coat, his metal fingers clacking up and down in an absent fashion, "He's a right queer cuss, he is, if ye forgive my plain speakin'.  A bit addled in the brains to go by his manner o' speakin' and ruther fond o' the drink, too; if ye knew 'im, ye'd recognize 'im quick."

        "I'll keep that in mind," she said, managing to stifle a yawn before it could grow into a haw-cracking monster.  As it was, the tiniest bit of air, warm from being kept long and stagnant in her lungs, pulled stubbornly free of her lips to brush the air, and she flickered her eyes to the furious silhouettes of at least three indiscriminately large aliens preparing to engage in some form of primitive decision-making; this apparently involved knives and random exposures of gnarled, sharpened teeth.

        Surprised, horrified, and not a little unsettled by this revelation, she cried, eyes widening and a quietly frustrated quality roughening it, "Would you please tell your men to avoid using cutlery?  I'm up to here with blood and bruises, and," struggling with her venting outbursts, she pressed on doggedly, "and, and – flim-flammery!"  

        _Saints alive, _she noted clinically but not without some amazement, _I just sounded like Mom._  And with her hands propped squarely on her hips and her nose wrinkling up in sheer irritation, tangled brown hair wrapped about her firmly set face, she thought she must certainly look the part as well amidst a great deal of dismay and resigned irony.

        She surprised a laugh out of Silver, a short, grumbling bark that proceeded into a flung roar as he wheezed, just slightly, with the unexpected humor of her burst of tapped anger, and he pantomimed the action of wiping away a pearled tear, bulk shivering with his amusement.  "Haven't heard t'at one since a certain cap'n I don't much feel like t'inkin' about.  Lord, marm, that was damn near the most sudden t'ing I heard in all the day," he grinned infectiously, sweeping off his hat and passing the metal back of his right hand over his forehead.

        Doffing the hat over his black 'kerchief and speaking a polite "I'll be takin' care o' this mischief," he turned about, broad shoulders edging back in what she correctly presumed was an intimidating manner as he somehow captured an air of power.  "What th' devil are ye doin', then, lads?  Are ye aimin' t'be complete fools or are ye just feelin' a bit more daft than is normal?"

        Blinking, but not wanting to forsake this opportunity of slipping unnoticed up the stairs in hope of finally retiring to her bed, Sarah smiled thanks at the coated back shifting menacingly and clambered along the steeply carved steps in their narrow hallway, skirts rustling a bizarre melody to accompany her.  She checked quickly on an empty suite before moving on, setting the door carefully ajar to mark it as current residence for Rosa and her child – until their foreboding Robert should reclaim them – and blew out the goblet-enclosed flame in each lantern down the hall.  At her room's door she stood on tiptoe and gently pursed her lips in a merciful killing breathe to extinguish the pale orange ember within, and then, rather quietly, twisted her doorknob and pushed the wooden door aside.

        The quiet of her room was a marked difference from that of the second floor, of which faint noise could still be heard, and she smiled reluctantly at the acute, alerted discomfort brought about by the deafening silence.  "I must be crazy," she whispered, absently touching her apron and starting at the remembered texture.  "The dishes!"

        With a wince at her own noise, she nudged the door further open and revealed dimly lit quarters, with the slackened forms of small mother and child recognizable on the bed's covers, pillows haphazardly tossed to the floor and muffled sounds of sleep coming from both.  "Well, all right," she raised an eyebrow and smiled in an affectionate, motherly lopsided fashion.

        Sarah set herself around the room, paced and even if with an exhausted intent to hurry and sleep foremost in mind, busying her hands with a brief variety of unspoken chores: fetching sturdy blankets out of the oak depths of a chest to spread on her floor as a makeshift cot; a plusher comforter bundled in her arms and spread swaddling across both Rosa and Mandi; and tugging the moderately heavy drapes away from the wide bay windows.  It allowed the thick, brilliant sheen of Crescentia's slender opal beauty to sprawl in elegant laziness through her room as though it were a lovelier shade of sunlight.

        The wind growled and shock the tall house in a fractional set of young groans and creaks, the protective sheet-metal on the roof and several areas of the upper walls holding strong and not budging nonetheless.

        Less time was needed to pluck off her apron, folding the length of cloth evenly, and changing her layers of clothing for the looser sake of a simple nightgown that fell straight and unchanging to below her ankles, setting to the side what she had shed.  Only when she was burrowed under her covers, brown hair spilling in a russet fall over a pillow thieved from the many abandoned on the bed, only then did she allow thought back in.  And as she thought on an unbidden, soothing memory of spooning next to the warmth of her own child long gone, hearing distantly the sound of raucous men laughing below, the wind grumbled its seasonal warning, rising and falling and fading.

-

        _Ultimately it was the lightning that sent Jim scurrying with his irrepressibly deep blue eyes half as wide as her china plates, his golden brown face paled and tightened by his childish fear of the snarling monsoon outside.  As the shutters clanked and banged a mournful rage, she sighed and pulled up the empty covers of her and Leland's bed to allow their terrified toddler room to huddle near her for warmth, comfort, and affection.  She had never felt grateful before, on the occasional nights when her handsome, dashing husband was away on call of off-world mining; it was easier to just let Jim scoot under the sheets than having to shake Leland and gently ask him if he would please mover a little, Jim was scared of the thunder._

_        He rolled over immediately to face her, legs pulling up evenly with his hips as he burrowed his face in her nightgown as though to hide from the storm, and she smiled down at the shaggy brunet crown of his head, fingers fluffing the short strands.  The soft, easily missed green tones in his eyes were from Leland, as was the growing sharpness in his features, but somehow it was a comfort to her – oh, she knew it was silly, knew it mattered only slightly – to see little things of herself: the line of his jaw and the strength of his chin that when still, pulled his lips into a thoughtful frown no matter the mood; the pale brown shades of his hair; his sensitive, stubborn moods; all little pieces of her.  _

_        A growl of thunder startled her out of her thoughts, unusually aged in sentiment, and she stiffened, her hand moving to cup the mirroring stiffness between her child's shoulder blades.  Lightning, too; they both hated it._

_        "I wanted to per'tect you," he said most seriously, pulling away to crane his head back and gaze with his natural, soulful frown at her.  "'Cause I'm no 'fraid of a buncha storms, an' I'm a big boy."  _

_        His voice was impressive at lying, but his eyes always shifted down and up, lidding slightly, whenever he thought to deceive; she thought with a smile that maybe he was trying convince himself of his own bravery and therefore not be frightened by the intimidating lightning and thunder.  At another peal of noisy thunder, an explosion of sound that shook and rattled their old home, just recently made an inn by her hands to ease finances, he jumped a little and she grimaced, shuddering at the hated reminder of the raining season._

_        "Well, I'm glad you're here," she finally replied with a laugh, easing somewhat as the sky remained quiet but for the harmony of heavy, flooding rains.  "I mean, however could I be safe without a man around to protect me?  After all," she leaned forward conspiratorially as Jim wriggled up to stare her curiously in the face, "when Daddy's away, that makes you," she poked him teasingly on his snub-ended nose, "the man of the house.  I'm counting on you to be my hero, you know."  Her expression was of solemn sincerity, even nodding a bit with the engrossing severity of it, and she bit the inside of her lower lip to keep a telling smile from spreading dangerously._

_        "Mom," he started in a trembling voice that squeaked, once, "I'm kinda 'fraid of it, too."  He looked up at her with his wide eyes and fear-whitened face, hands fisting in the green folds of his pajamas, and was clearly not prepared for this sudden responsibility she had revealed to him._

_        "Then I'll have to protect you, too," she stated, nodding her head just so to emphasize her words.  "So if you make sure to look after me," he nodded vigorously, blue eyes streaked nearly unseen with shamrock tones made wide with the depth of his agreement, "then I'll make sure to keep you from ever having to be afraid, okay?"  She grinned, seeing the dubious expression on his face and the wholly Jim cock of his thick eyebrows as if to voicelessly alter of his suspicions otherwise, and carefully drew him to her, cradling him close.  "I love you, Jim," she said gently, but in such a firm way as to make it clear he should sleep._

_        And in that moment, content with the boundless love of a child, Sarah was at peace._

--

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Notes:  I'm a bad author, what with the delay and all…*sorrowful expression*  Anyway, this is only the first half of part two, but as I'd taken so long getting this far, I only thought it right to split it in half and post what I had done right away.  Let's hope I speed it up a bit, eh?  I'm sorry if this didn't seem very good or was too one-sided, but I'm a bit suspicious this is a Sarah fic that just happens to have Silver in it, too.  I'll be sure to rectify that in the next half, okay?  ^^

Joke:  The Admiral Inn was pulled from the original novel; the Hawkins' inn was fully named the Admiral Benbow Inn.  As Sarah only ran the Benbow, I thought she might be on good speaking terms with the owner of the Admiral.  ^-  Black Dog, too, was pulled from the book.  Ooo – cliffhanger-y.  Sort of.  A little?  Erm, anyway.  Grounge's name is pronounced as a sort of cross between _grunge _(as in the music genre) and _scrounge _(as in to scavenge).  Pronounced: GROW-nngh.  If that helped any, which I doubt.

Thanks go to:  _Weirdlet _(*blushes*  Many thanks!  And I hope to read your fic soon…*cough*hint!), _JuuChanStar _(ah, I haven't read your fic yet, I'm sorry!  *flustered*  I don't have a decent excuse/reason, and I really, really do apologize), _Aahz _(switched *salutes* and I need to read your fic, too – especially that Monsters Inc. one with Randall; that one looked rather interesting and I don't even like ol' Randy), _western-pegasus _(here's a big hug for being such a doll, another hug as apology for being in Egypt, and a third hug as incentive for you to write more on Know Thyself - ^^), _Tears of Jade _(oh, hallelujah!  I was so afraid I was going to mess up Silver's character, and I certainly hope I did him justice this time around; glad you're enjoying it), and _stormqueen_ (just sent an e-mail poppin' off, and don't worry, there'll be some actual, decent, honest-to-God interaction in the second half of this part).  ^^  It is truly appreciated, all!

Disclaimer:  At this point, I should state that while many of the characters do belong to me (Grounge, Calcutta, Rosa, Mandi, Katya, and so forth), many more do not, and neither do the places or universe they are set within.  Those belong to people far more important than I, and I simply borrow them for my fanciful adventures in The Great Fanfiction Sandbox.  Now with sandcastles on Tuesdays!


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